Wendy Corr:
Well, hey there, folks, welcome to The Roundup! We are a Cowboy State Daily podcast, and we focus on interesting people here in the Cowboy State. And I am so thrilled today to bring you not just one guest, but a whole panel of guests whose expertise is in the American West, and we're going to have a great conversation today with three really incredible authors.
First though, I want to make sure that people know about our partner organization, the Wyoming Business Alliance. The Wyoming Business Alliance has a really fantastic resource, a lot of resources for business people here in Wyoming, and it’s starting with their podcast. They've got the “Business From the Basement” podcast brought to you by the Wyoming Business Alliance.
So anyone who is a news junkie, who is a business person, an entrepreneur, if you've got an interest in building your business and being a better business person, please don't miss out on their podcast. We are glad to promote them and glad to have them as partners with us.
But talking about business, the business of history, and history is where we, so many of us who choose to live in Wyoming, history is what keeps us here- it's what lights us up when we go on a road trip and we see one of those Wayside signs. We learn just a little bit about the people who lived here before us.
And the people that we have on today's Roundup are people and authors who have researched the American West, and they've made it their business to know what our history is, and so I am very pleased to have join us today, Candy Moulton!
Candy is a regular contributor to Cowboy State Daily. She is the one who's headed up this American West experience segment that we have here on Cowboy State Daily.
We also have Rod Miller - and we're going to call him Rod Miller because that's his name, not to be confused with the Rod Miller of the cowboy hat and long beard fame, who is also a columnist for Cowboy State Daily. RB Miller is who you're going to see if you're looking up his byline. RB Miller, he has just some phenomenal stories that he's shared with us.
Also, we have Jim Crutchfield, who, we've had some technical difficulties today. I mean, what is a day on a computer without a technical difficulty? Which is why you're just seeing a picture of Jim today. But James Crutchfield is also one of our contributors for the American West series of articles.
And so I'm gonna start off by going to Candy, because Candy, you're the reason we're all together today. Candy, you've got just years of experience in writing. You started off at the Saratoga newspaper. You and I had a great podcast several months ago now, you were one of my first podcast guests, but tell us just a little bit briefly about your purpose and your role here in bringing all of these amazing authors together.
Candy Moulton:
Thanks, first of all, Wendy for bringing us together today. In spite of our technical difficulties, it is a thrill to see everybody and to be involved in this project. And it kind of started on a crazy idea. I have a lot of crazy - my family knows I have wackadoodle ideas.
And so it came about because I'd been doing a little bit of writing for Cowboy State Daily. And I love to write history, so I've been writing some history pieces, and I write a column, and my column tends to have a history bent to it as well. And I could see that there were some opportunities in the publication in Cowboy State Daily, the whole operation, for more stories about the American West, and particularly history of the West.
And then I realized that the next year is the 200th anniversary of the first rendezvous. And the rendezvous started in Wyoming, 1825, down at Burnt Fork on the Henry's Fork. And it was kind of a small gathering of men who were out trapping beaver, and they brought supplies to them. They traded their beaver pelts for supplies for the next year. And so it was a whole - you talk about the Wyoming Business Alliance, it was the first business alliance in the state, before it was a state.
Wendy Corr:
I love that so much. That's fantastic.
Candy Moulton:
Yeah. So that's how it started. I just got to thinking, Gosh, I'd like to write some stories that revolved around rendezvous and the men who who were involved in the fur trade, in that whole mountain trade, because there's so many of them, and they're so key to the history of Wyoming. You know, there's Jim Bridger and there's Fitzpatrick and Sublette and Meeke. I mean, they're just, there's so many of them. And they all, they left their names all over our state.
And so I went to Jimmy, Jimmy Orr, of course, at Cowboy State Daily, and said, hey, you know, I'd like to do kind of a series, maybe, about some of these mountain men to lead into this rendezvous. Because of the 15 rendezvous, half of them were in Wyoming, you know, on the Green River. They were on the Popo Agie. They were down in southern, southeastern Wyoming, southwestern Wyoming. And so Jimmy said, Yeah, let's do it.
And then I said to him, you know, we could really do a whole series about the American West and talk about the history of the West. I know a lot of writers, and I'm very fortunate in that I've for a long time, I was very involved in Western Writers of America. I edited their magazine. I was their executive director for a time, and so I got to know all these really great writers across the country.
And I had worked with Jim Crutchfield and Terry Del Bane on an encyclopedia, and maybe Jim can talk a little bit about that in a minute, Wendy. We did an encyclopedia together about the expansion and of the American West, really the whole country. And we worked with a lot of really great writers.
And so it's like, well, we already know these writers, and they could write on so many subjects. So starting with the fur trade, which is one of Jim's expertise areas as well. So I said, Well, I could get probably Jim and Terry, and Jim and Terry and I could write some articles, a couple articles a week. And so that's what we did.
And then Jimmy wants to expand it. And so he said, Can you find some more writers? And so I reached out to people who had written for us when we did the encyclopedia, people that I know, RB Miller, Rod Miller, here is one of those, one of the first ones I reached out to. He's a Spur winner.
Jim and Rod and I have another connection. We all wrote for a series of books called the American heroes. And so Rod wrote a book about John Muir. Jim wrote about George Washington. I wrote about Chief Joseph. So that there, we have just lots of connections. We've known each other for a long time, all of us.
So that's how it started, and that's where we are. And so, you know, Rod is in Utah, this is our Utah Rod, and he's not only a non fiction historian, he's very good at that, but he's also a poet and he's also a fiction writer.
And like I said, Jim has all this background in frontier history and mountain man fur trade, the southwest. You know that, you name it, so let you talk to them and get some of their background too.
Wendy Corr:
I love that. I love that you've gotten all these people together! But it is a community. It is a community of people who are like minded and who do get together - things like Western Writers of America. Rod, let's talk real quickly about your involvement in that. I just read one of your stories the other day about the Hawaiian cowboys that came to giant Frontier Days. And I believe it was like 1908, right?
R.B. Miller:
Yeah, it was. It was a fun story to write. Rodeo has always been an interest of mine. When I was in college, I was on the rodeo team at Utah State University and rodeo high school and college, and then some pro rodeo, so I've always had a real interest in rodeo and history in general.
I mean, I'm not an academic historian by any stretch of the imagination - they say that there are two ways that history gets written. One is historians who write, and the other is writers who history. And I'm a writer, and I love history, and the stories in history, that's what appeals to me about it.
The things that happen, not so much, all the detail, although that's important, and you have to have that there, but it's, it's the stories, the people and how they overcome the challenges that they face. And in the West, there were always challenges. So it's just, it's just been something that I've always, always loved.
Wendy Corr:
Well, we are glad that you're sharing those stories with us. Jim, your most recent story that I just was reading about was the Yakult fire. Am I saying that right? And it didn't take place in Wyoming - but with all of us and the fires that we're experiencing here now, I know that you're in Tennessee, but right now we're just having these massive wildfires in several parts of the state. This is something that I think a lot of people look at and like, wow, fires in history. Tell us about the Yakult fire.
Jim Crutchfield:
Well, the Yakult fire was one of the largest fires to date at that point in time that had ever occurred in the United States. It happened in the Pacific Northwest. And of course, we know what that is, just square mile after square mile of Douglas fir and Fraser fir and so forth, and so on, a veritable rainforest that goes on for thousands of square miles.
And this fire began. And it was, it was just like wildfire, just very, very sad, burned up. I don't tell you on the front end, when I write something, I lose a lot of the figures, so I can't give you exact acreage, etc, etc, but it was literally one of the worst.
And the reason I wrote that was because we have fires all over the place in the United States. I know that. But through Cowboy State Daily, I kept seeing the articles about the fires in Wyoming, and I thought, Well, I think Wyoming people need to empathize, be empathized with, certainly, but they need to also know that Western America, has a history and a tradition of bad, bad, large, large forest fires.
And so this was one of the worst that I could find. There have been some bigger now and many, many later, but the couple of three days before I wrote this article, they had another article in the Daily about this one. I can't remember which one it was, but it just gone crazy, and just was really covering tens of thousands of square miles.
So it was, it was fun to bring something that, I think, if people are reading, something that they've just heard about, or something that that resonates with them about that, something that they can put a finger on, that they've seen, that they've experienced.
And mercy, the heroic firefighters and first responders you have out there. They're just, I mean, they're angels, and they need to be brought to the attention about what firefighting is all about, and what they've done to save not only people and animals and livestock, but the forests themselves and natural resources and wildlife, of course.
Wendy Corr:
That's great. Yes. Thank you so much. But that's exactly it. When we look at our current events, we often forget that this is something that's happened before - and Candy, do you think that that's one of the reasons why people are so enamored with history? With these American West stories? Because we often forget that people are people and humans will repeat the mistakes of the past. How do you look at that, the importance of history in that way?
Candy Moulton:
Well, for one thing, and Rod mentioned this. He said he's not an academic historian - neither are any of the writers that are working for the American West series. We're all what you call popular historians, and we are more about the story. And yeah, we put the facts in there, but we want to tell it in a way that is really engaging.
And I think that's why people are resonating. And they like our stories, because we take them to a people or a place, a person, an action, an event, and we try really hard - all of us try really hard to put our readers right in the middle of it.
You know that Jim story about the Yakult fire? You know, you've almost, when you're reading that you feel like you're running from that fire, in the same way that people in Dayton, Wyoming right now are running from a fire. So it's not a good situation.
And, and Rod did that with, with the Cheyenne Frontier Days story about the, oh, I never say it right - Rod, the pannolia. How do you say it?
R.B. Miller:
Paniolos.
Candy Moulton:
Paniolos, so those are the Hawaiian cowboys. And Ikua Purdy came, and they kind of mopped up the Wyoming and the Western cowboys in that - and Rod put you right in the middle of it. And you know, he weaves a story so well that, I think that's why people resonate with what we're doing with American West.
And, you know, we've got Bill Markley's writing for us. He's out of South Dakota. He wrote one of his first pieces, and there were people that were - he debunks legends. That's kind of wwhat Bill is really good at going out and finding the facts that like, No, Calamity Jane and Bill Hickok probably weren't lovers. It's probably not what the story was.
And so when he writes things like that, his first one was about Bill Cody, and he said some things that are true that kind of go against the legend of Bill Cody. And I know Bill Markley had a few emails from people saying, well, what can you do? Even on the Facebook, the Cowboy State Daily Facebook page, what are you doing here? You can't tear this guy down. And it's like, well, reality is reality.
Wendy Corr:
I’m from Cody. I've lived in Cody for 25 years. And I'm telling you, there's a lot more to Bill Cody than what - people have put him up on a pedestal. So, yes, exactly. In fact, Jim, you just wrote a story about the death of Bill Cody, didn't you?
Jim Crutchfield
About maybe a couple of three months ago, I believe. And that's another interesting story. The man had such a tortured life toward the end of his life, and ended up not being put where he wanted to be put. So it's kind of a sad ending. But again, that's, you know, Buffalo Bill.
You think of Buffalo Bill, you think of the Wild West shows that he produced in the latter part of his career. You think of his Indian days, Indian fighting days. You think of all of that. But does anybody ever think about how the poor guy died? I mean, it wasn't a fun thing to do at that point in time.
I mean, he was really beyond going and he had some financial troubles, and a lot of his friends turned on him and so forth, and then didn't even get to be buried where he wanted to be. So, no.
Wendy Corr:
That's such a legend up here in Cody too, about, was he really buried in Golden Colorado, on Lookout Mountain? We're not sure. So we that’s the mystery, though. Like Candy, you said, there's so many things, there's so many topics out there that capture the imagination
But what's also interesting, those of you who are writing these stories, so much of your writing comes from your experience. I mean, Rod, you have been a cowboy and a ranch hand. I mean, I think that that's just fascinating. Tell us a little bit about why you decided that writing was your thing when you've had such a really interesting and very varied career.
R.B. Miller:
Well, I guess a lot of it is that I just learned that I had the ability to sit on my butt for long periods of time, which is something you have to do if you want to be a writer. Yeah, the experiences are certainly important. You get to know people, you try to understand people, you try to figure out what makes them tick.
And you do that with the people you meet today, and you do that with the people you read about in history, and the people you try to get to know as you're learning about them in order to write about them.
And it's always a challenge, because, as with Buffalo Bill Cody, there are lots of people who try to turn the west into just a big bunch of heroes. And there certainly were heroes. And most everybody out here was heroic in some way, but, but these people weren't perfect.
And so as we study and we learn about them and find out that they're just like us and they have their flaws, then you have to try to figure out a way to paint that picture and still give them credit for the good that they did, but also not try to whitewash the bad things that they did.
I know I was involved about a year ago, a gentleman from Radio Kerry, over in Ireland, was doing a radio documentary about Patrick Edward Connor, who was from Kerry and came to America and became a soldier. And he was a colonel at Fort Douglas in Utah, in Salt Lake City, and he launched an attack on a camp of Shoshones in - it's actually in Idaho, just over the border, north of Preston, and it was the worst massacre of Indians in the whole history of the West.
And it's really not very well known, and I've written a lot about it, but this gentleman from Ireland wanted to present a full picture of Patrick Edward Connor and let people in Ireland know - we've had a lot of people from Ireland go to America, and some of them did great things. Some of them did not such great things. And Connor is an example of somebody who did something that nobody should be proud of.
And so it's just, it's a balancing act, you know, I guess you have to, as I said, not ignore the good things that the people in the West did, but at the same time, you can't ignore the bad things they did as well.
Wendy Corr:
Absolutely - it really, we come back to the idea of being balanced, and we're humans. Humans were humans were humans, and people were people, now and then.
I want to shift gears real just slightly and ask Candy - Candy, I know you mentioned the rendezvous and things like that. When we're talking about what we like and what we love about history and the things that we want to preserve in those stories, what we want to get out there, what's your favorite subject? What's your favorite topic? What stories do you like to tell the most?
Candy Moulton:
Everybody knows me. I love the trails. I've been so fortunate in my career to get to travel all of these major immigrant trails by wagon train. So I got to live it as well as learn it and write about it, you know, from a historic standpoint.
So that's my number one. It's always been the trails, even kind of before I got on them. I grew up - I live here in Encampment, and just less than a quarter of a mile from my house is a strand of the Cherokee Trail. And it's called the South Branch of the Cherokee, and it's the Cherokee Trail that went to from Arkansas and Oklahoma to California.
And they, these - mainly Cherokees, there were other people that traveled it, but it was mainly Cherokees who started on it, and that's why it takes their name. And they were going to the gold fields. Not that they were miners. They knew about mining because they'd come out of Georgia and places where there was some mining. But more than that, they were really smart business people, and they decided that, what the mining camps were going to need would be food. And what better food than to take cattle?
And so the first cattle drive that went through my area went on this South Branch of the Cherokee Trail in 1849-1850 and they were taking these herds out to California to sell them for food, for meat in the camps out there.
So I remember when I was a little little girl, my dad took me out and showed me where those ruts were on that Cherokee Trail. And then I was probably seven or eight years old with my sister and her friend who lived just about a half a mile up from where my house is right now. And we went up on an adventure as little kids do with our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and we were just wandering around, and we found teepee rings.
And not only did we find teepee rings, but we found silver conchos in the area where these teepee rings were, and we picked them up, as kids will do. And we took them back to our friend Susie's mom - and I remember it vividly. She took them in the bathroom, and she got out her toothbrush and some toothpaste, and she cleaned these up - everything an archeologist would not want you to do, she did.
And then she kept them, and I never saw them again, partially because, sadly, she passed away a couple years later, and her friends moved, and we just weren't back there. It took my sister and I about 45 years to find those teepee rings again. They're found when they want to be found.
They're not found all the time, and we took her granddaughters up there when they were about three or four years old, and now they're in their late or mid 20s. So it's been 20 some years ago, and so that just being on the trail like that, that's really what inspired me, and it's just been the one thing I've always loved. I like writing Native American stories too, but I really love the trails, you know.
Wendy Corr:
And I think that's what it comes down to for those of us, especially who live here in Wyoming - because all you have to do is walk out your front door and you're standing, and you can see where history was made.
And I'm sure, Jim, you've got that same experience. I know you're in Tennessee, your field has been in, you know, the American Revolution and civil war. Those have really been focuses for you in your writing career as well. But this, this idea, when you come to the west, you're walking and you can almost see - and in so many places, you can see the world the way it looked 150 years ago.
And tell us about your experiences, Jim, with being in these places, and writing about these things that you can almost almost see.
Jim Crutchfield:
One, I preface all of this by saying that Candy will get a kick out of this, because she knows it. I made arguments with many, many WWA members, Western writers, because I'm from Tennessee, east of the Mississippi, which you know, the kind of ,what are you doing here? Etc, etc.
I always shut them up when I told them that the first West was not Colorado, was not California, was not Oregon, was not Wyoming. The first West was Jamestown, Virginia, when they landed there in 1607, and from that point on, there has been a Western movement.
It wasn't called Manifest Destiny then, it was Western movement, to get to somewhere that - they didn't know where they were going, but they wanted to get to mighty badly. And so Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, the places that are getting wiped out right now as we speak with that horrible flood, that was the first West.
And the second West was when they crossed those Appalachian mountains and came into the fertile valleys of Kentucky and Tennessee. The third West was when they crossed the Mississippi and went all the way to the Pacific.
So my passion is westward expansion, later called Manifest Destiny, which has a corrupted definition to it, because, you know, it made one race stand on top of another because they thought they were better, which, of course, they weren't.
But you have to understand that the history of the United States of America, the history of North America, was one of constant - not the same timing, because some periods move faster than others, but was a period of constant migration. Maybe 20 miles this year, maybe 200 miles next year, but gradually we got from the Atlantic seaboard to Sacramento.
And it took a long time, and it took a lot of guts and luck. Took a lot of nerve and a lot of intelligence, but that's where we are today, and that, to me, is the basis of any study of North America that you make, is the western expansion.
The Encyclopedia that Candy talked about was a two volume, I don't know, 700 page, two volume, history of the Western movement of north of the United States of America. And people who opened it for the first time probably were very surprised to see Daniel Boone in there, to see David Crockett in there, to see people who are thought of by most people as being just pure Eastern people.
But one last comment, a lot of the mountain men came from Tennessee and Kentucky. A lot of the obviously, a lot of people at the Alamo were from Tennessee and Kentucky. Tennessee has a tremendous tradition with Western thinking and Western byways and mores, etc, and so it's just a natural outgrowth for me.
Yes, I was born in Tennessee. I've never lived anywhere other than Tennessee. I've traveled over practically the entire continental United States, including the American West. I love it. Fell in love with it the minute I stepped in New Mexico years ago. I’ve been to Wyoming many times, Montana more than I could say, etc, etc. And it's just it all fell together and here I am.
Wendy Corr:
So, when you stand in these places, when you go to these places, and you look at the landscape and say, ‘This is how it felt to be in this time and in this place.’ How do you capture that idea then, and tell that story? What is it that, I guess, what's your impetus to say, ‘This is a story that has to be told.’
Jim Crutchfield:
I guess it centers around mainly the subject matter, but the grandeur of the landscape is one thing that blew me away in the West. Now, Tennessee's got some beauty that you wouldn't believe. It's just beyond compare. The Southern Appalachians are absolutely gorgeous.
But the open spaces in the American West, my wife and I went on a cattle drive years and years ago in Montana, down around Saint Xavier. I had never seen so many stars in the heavens in one night as I saw sitting in the middle of God knows where. I have no idea where I was, except near St. Xavier. And it was just awesome. It was just absolutely awesome.
And then, you know that people, you knew people, I had a relative, a great-great uncle, who ended up with the United States Army in Washington. He was in the sixth cavalry, who was at the battle of Ash Creek, Ash Holler with Harney and his men in Nebraska. And you know, he walked right by all those players. He was in the infantry, and he was an infantryman, and so, you know, that makes me feel close to it. So, there's a relationship there.
Wendy Corr:
There is. There's a relationship there.
Jim Crutchfield:
It’s hard to explain, but it's there.
Wendy Corr:
I'm going to go to Rod. When you think about the first time you decided to, can you remember the first time you decided to write a story and to tell it? What was that story that you said, I want to write this down. I don't want to forget this, and I want to share this with somebody.
R.B. Miller:
It's kind of a hard thing to put your finger on. I guess I did not start writing anything other than advertising. I made my living as an advertising copywriter and creative director in ad agencies, and so I've written all my life, but didn't really consider myself a writer in the sense that I do now, I guess.
And I was in my mid 40s, I suppose. And it was just curiosity that made me wonder if I could write something else, and poetry seemed a good place to start. I had always admired Cowboy Poetry, and was a big fan of a lot of the cowboy poets, so I thought, I'll see if I can do this.
And I started getting a lot of poems published, which only encouraged me. And then one day I woke up and wondered if I could write a short story. And then one day I woke up and wondered if I could write a novel, and I was asked to write some nonfiction for magazines and also some books. And it just, you know, it just kind of surprised me that I could actually do this, because I was never sure that I was really a writer.
But I don't know that there's any one particular story. There are several things I keep coming back to. One of them is the Bear River massacre. I've written a lot about that. There was a notorious fellow in the history of Utah named Porter Rockwell. I've written about him a lot, but my interests are really pretty wide, and I always feel like there's something out there that has to be told.
Whether it's something from the trails that Candy specializes in, I have a real affinity for cowboys. I write about trail drives and ranching and mountain men, a little bit, not as much, although I probably will be doing more of that. And a lot of stuff about the American Indians, particularly probably the Shoshone, who were, you know, we’re in their homeland now. And so that's always been an interest to me. And so I've written quite a bit about that as well.
But it's just, as I say, it's not one particular thing that grabs me. It's kind of everything, and it's just a matter of deciding which one's next.
Wendy Corr:
Which story to tell next. Candy, you've written, earlier this summer, you wrote a couple of stories about women in the West. You know, about Narcissa Whitman going, and really, truly being a trailblazer. Loved the story about Calamity Jane being a scout. I thought that was fantastic.
These are things that, do you feel like this is an opportunity, The American West series is an opportunity for you to shine a light on these little known stories and really bring them to a broader audience?
Candy Moulton:
Yeah, absolutely. You know, one thing I've always felt is that some people get far more attention than they need or deserve. And, you know, I could mention Billy the Kid and, you know, Wyatt Earp and some of those guys, and there are other people who get far less than they deserve. Porter Rockwell would be a great topic. He's a fantastic character in Utah history, Mormon history. He's really good.
I love writing the stories about the women of the West because they are underserved in many ways, but there are some people who write about them. Linda Womack writes quite a few. She's writing for this series now, and I'm sure she'll be doing some as well.
But some of their stories, they're maybe not as exciting, because what were they doing? They were taking care of the kids. They were taking care of the house. They were raising, you know, huge gardens, and anybody who has a garden knows that it's not the hard part of raising the garden. It's the hard part of taking care of all that produce and canning it and preserving it, drying it, whatever, however you're going to save it so you have it for all winter.
And so you just think about the real, I mean, the women were so damn tough. There is just no other way to put it. And they still are, in many respects.
And, a thing that I want to come back to, Wendy that you asked about, and you asked Jim about this, a kind of connection to the land. And I know that we all feel strongly, when we write stories, whenever we can, we try to get on the ground where the events happened. All of us do that, and that gives us an understanding of the place, because in many, many, many cases, the place has not changed.
I mean, I was traveling the Mormon trail. We were in Nebraska, in the Sandhills, and one morning we came out at, you know, seven o'clock in the morning, it's kind of cold. We're wrapped up in blankets because wagons are really cold in the morning, and we could hear the frogs just singing and singing, you know, they were really busy doing things.
And then later in the day, it's hot, and you're kind of dying in the heat. And we were in a sandy area in some original ruts. And Ben and I, my friend that I traveled with a lot, we tipped our wagon over in the ruts. And that all sounds kind of mundane, right?
Except that I was reading the journals of the 1847 Mormon trail wagon train, and I was putting exact place to exact place, exact place to exact place. They wrote about the frogs. They wrote about the frogs, same place. So those kinds of things happen.
They wrote about those sandy ruts that they were just beginning to create. They didn't talk about them as ruts. They didn't tip wagons over. But they talked about how hard it was to get through that deep sand. It's kind of, I know it's the Nebraska Sandhills, and it's just, you know, the narrower your tire is on your wagon, the deeper you sink, and the harder it is to pull.
And so you learn things like that by just being on the land. And I know Jim does it. Jim's written a lot about, he mentioned New Mexico. He's written a lot about the Santa Fe Trail. He's written a lot about the Taos revolt. He's been in New Mexico. He wouldn't be able to write as effectively and as authoritatively if he hadn't been there.
Rod does the same thing. All of our writers do that. I mean, it's really important to me. They may want to say something about how important it is to be where the events occurred. That's how you get the understanding of, ‘Oh, now I get why Connor came this direction, or why Custer went that direction. Now I get it.’ And you don't get that just from reading about it.
Wendy Corr:
That's the truth, absolutely. And I think that's one of the gifts that we have living here in Wyoming is that we can go to these places. But it's writers like all of you that bring the attention to those locations, whether it's here in Wyoming or in other places.
You know, talking about going and being on the ground, where I lived in Buffalo, and we moved to Wyoming in the 80s. We lived five miles from the Fetterman massacre. And I know Jim, that you wrote a story for the American West series about the Fetterman massacre. Those are things that you almost feel haunted by.
And do you find that, Jim, do you find that when you go to a place that speaks to you, do you almost feel the ghosts of those people?
Jim Crutchfield:
Yeah, it's certainly something to think about. And it's good that you brought up the Fetterman massacre, because the wife of the second in command of that massacre, Lieutenant Grumman, you probably don't remember reading it, but she came from Franklin, Tennessee, which is where I live. So she lived here. She came from a very prominent family.
So when I was at the Fetterman, when my wife and I were at the Fetterman Battlefield, Dee Brown was there. Dee Brown obviously wrote a lot of American Indian books, and he also wrote a informative book about the Fetterman massacre, the first book that I can remember that was ever written that was authoritative.
And I stood in back of Dee, and I was watching him, and it was many years after he'd written that book, but he was observing and all this that and the other, and it was such an event for me to be there for two reasons.
One, because right down the trail was where Grumman got massacred, and they lived right down the street during the Civil War years, from where I lived down the street. And then there's Dee Brown, who I thought was one of the greatest American historians has ever lived. And you feel a closeness. I mean, you know, you it's almost like it's another world.
I guess going to space would feel the same way. None of us know anything about space, so whatever we find, we have to take for granted. So, but I mean, it's, I don't know, it's hard to explain.
I don't think a person who lives and breathes history like we do and like a lot of other people do, I don't think they can ever adequately explain to a person who doesn't give a flip about history, why they're so rabid, and why they want to get the story on paper before it leaves, or before you die, or before whatever happens, or before the building burns down, etc, etc, etc. And they say, so what?
You know, it's, it's not a football game, but, you know, makes a mighty fine replacement. As far as I’m concerned.
Wendy Corr:
Well, I think anybody who is a fan of the American West series that we have going on at Cowboy State Daily will agree with all of you, with the passion that you have for history and for telling these stories.
We are literally just about out of time, but I want to, just real quickly, thank all of you for your contributions to tell these stories, these little known stories.
We have heard the stories of Buffalo Bill, but have we heard this story? We've heard the story of the Fetterman massacre, but have we heard this angle? We've heard the stories of the rendezvous, but have we really dove into who this person was, and why they were there, and what impact that has now on our lives. So I want to thank all of you for your contributions to this and tell you how grateful I am for your stories, and those of us who are fans of history.
Candy, I'm going to toss it back to you for one final comment. Thank you for bringing us these great writers and for this collaboration. What's next? Because you're editing all of these, Candy, what stories can we look for in coming weeks?
Candy Moulton:
Rod's got a story that I think is going to come out, and it's about Matt Warner. He was a part of The Wild Bunch. I have a story about Chief Joseph. Jim has a story about Merriweather Lewis and the Natchez Trace. So that's a different take on what we - what a lot of people may not know about Meriwether Lewis, we all know about Lewis and Clark, but that’s maybe a lesser known story. It's in Jim's backyard.
That's one thing I would like to say is, we're telling these stories, maybe from different angles. We're not necessarily telling, ‘Oh, here's Bill Cody's whole life story.’ Here's one tiny piece of it.
And you are going to see stories in the American West that all of our writers are going to tell. We all have different interests and but we all have different takes on things.
So I had a Calamity Jane story. I have another Calamity Jane story that's in the queue that Bill Markley wrote. It's a completely different story. So we'll be hitting some of the same topics, but we're going to hit them in different ways. And I think we all look for the stories that are lesser told. I call it grassroots history, you know - the things that maybe not everybody knows, and we dive in and we find some tidbit. And the research is the fun part, and then the writing is the hard part. As Rod said, You’ve got to put your butt in the chair and do it, but it's really great to get it out there. And really why we do it, is we want readers, we want people to know and appreciate and understand it.
The history of the American West is really the history of America, and it is important to understand our history. We shouldn't cancel our history, even the ugly parts. We need to tell them, we need to remember them so we don't repeat them.
Wendy Corr:
That is absolutely true, Candy. So well said. Thank you so much. Thank you all for what you're bringing to us as Cowboy State Daily readers and viewers.
And folks, thank you. Thank you for tuning in today to The Roundup. We have had such an amazing conversation, and I would encourage all of you to seek out more publications, more stories by these very talented and well read and well researched authors, who are bringing us the stories you're not going to find in your high school history textbook. This is the real West, and coming to you from people who have put their boots on the ground. So thank you for tuning in today.
Thank you Rod. Thank you Jim. Thank you Candy. Folks, don't forget, check out the Wyoming Business Alliance “Business From the Basement” podcast, because their business is your business, and they are in the business to help you. So please, don't miss out on what they've got to bring.
But come back and see us next week. We've got a lot more great stories to tell. So have a wonderful week.
