EP 2-13 MIKE BELL
Wendy Corr:
Well, hey there, folks, welcome to The Roundup. We are a Cowboy State Daily podcast, and we focus on interesting people in the cowboy state - but in this case, we're making a bit of an exception, because today's guest is not actually in the cowboy state. But he is, can I say, an obsession, Mike Bell?
He is in Birmingham, England. Mike Bell is a member of the English Westerners Society, which is a group of people who are fascinated by the stories, the people, the tales of the Old West.
And Mike is with us today because we did a story recently - one of our wonderful reporters, Jackie Dorothy, did a story about the English Westerners Society, and their real focus on preserving the history and celebrating the history of the Old West, particularly here in Wyoming. It really caught my eye, and I thought, well, we've got to talk to Mike Bell. So, we're talking with Mike Bell.
Hello, Mike from Birmingham, England, we're glad to have you here.
Mike Bell:
Hi. It's great to be here. Thank you for having me.
Wendy Corr:
Time Zones make no difference when we're talking about zoom calls. I love technology in that way that we can connect across the pond, as they say. Mike, thank you so much for being with us today. Tell us about your first introduction to the Old West that captured your imagination and that just has been a thread throughout your life.
Mike Bell:
Well, that goes back. I know I don't look it, but I am in my 60s now. But that goes back to the 1960s when I was a kid. And at that time here in the UK, there were three, two or three television channels, but they all ran as entertainment. They ran black and white western TV series. So I grew up on a diet of rawhide Bonanza, Laramie, you name it. There were dozens of them at the time.
And then when I was at high school, my history teacher, who's responsible for a great deal, he said, well, if you're really interested, you know, we could write to some of the places that you're interested in, write to the libraries and museums and see if you want to find out some more, which is, so he helped me do that.
So by the time I was about 12 or 13, I'd been writing to places in the West for a couple of years, and some I never heard from, but many of them replied courteously, and they sent me little newspaper clippings or the old Xerox copies of articles.
So by the time I was about 13 or 14, I thought, well, I know quite a bit about the Old West. And then for my 13th birthday, a friend of mine said, we're going to go and see a movie because you're interested in the Old West. Okay? Said, What we going to see? Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
I had never heard of Butch and the Sundance Kid, but when I came out of that movie, I thought, How come I've never heard about these guys? And that's really what kicked it off. That got me.
I was always interested as a child in the history of the West in its broader sense, you name it, mining, women's issues, outlaws, Indian Affairs, whatever. But for some reason those two outlaws had passed me by, and that got me fascinated by them.
And that's what got me back in the early 80s, on my first trip to Wyoming, falling off a horse in the hole in the wall. But actually, because horses move faster than I do, and I tend to stop, but they keep going. But yeah, so that's what kicked it off.
Wendy Corr:
So we can thank Robert Redford and Paul Newman for your interest.
Mike Bell:
The film doesn't wear well as history, but it's great entertainment. And decades later, I'm still fascinated by the Wyoming outlaws.
Wendy Corr:
So tell us. You've discovered this affinity and this fascination for Wyoming, the outlaws - by the way, you’ve got to look at his mug. His mug's great - the Hole in the Wall, Kaycee, Wyoming.
Mike Bell:
Great place.
Wendy Corr:
Yeah, he brought Wyoming home with him, and I just think that's great. You’ve got a picture on your wall, in your library, correct?
Mike Bell:
Yes, yeah, that's probably hard to see. That's a picture of me on the Powder River pass back in 2019. It was a warm day in Buffalo. It was snowing on top of the pass when I went over to Ten Sleep. So that's Wyoming for you, if you don't like the weather, wait five minutes. It'll be different.
Wendy Corr:
That is absolutely right. For someone who doesn't live here, you have a remarkable grasp on what it's like to live here. So you said your first trip over here was in the early 80s. That was the first of many. Tell us then, the different places that you've been in Wyoming, and what sort of - I know it's probably a long list - but what t is the common thread between the places that you have been here.
Mike Bell:
Well, I have been to most places in Wyoming over the years and surrounding states, and what usually attracts me to a particular place is, I want to find out some more about the 19th century outlaws. So for example, back in 2019 I did a month in Wyoming, largely. I went to the archives in Laramie in Cheyenne, because there's an amazing amount of material still hidden away in there.
But then I did a field trip up through buffalo, because Cassidy was in Buffalo in the in 1890-1891, over the mountain into Ten Sleep, then into the basin to Thermopolis, up from there, up through Cody to Heart Mountain, because Cassidy and others were stealing horses around Heart Mountain in the late 1880s.
Back down through the basin to Auburn and Afton in the Star Valley, because that's where he was captured in 1891, through Evanston, that's where he was held in jail for three months. Back through Lander, I've been to Lander, goodness knows how many times, because that's where he was held and tried in the mid 1890s.
Back to Laramie, because the state penitentiary Is there - still a wonderful resource and a wonderful museum, because that's where he spent nearly two years between 1894 and 1896.
And then I do dumb things like, Did you know there's a North Owl Creek Road? Because many of the people he interacted with - yeah, not South Owl Creek Road. South Owl Creek road's a good dirt road. North Owl Creek Road is mud, as I discovered, to my cost.
But I do like to go to places that bring the history to life, to stand on the ground in a muddy field in Wyoming, knowing that this is where people were, and events happened. It just brings all the documents and the dry history to life. And you think, yeah, this person stood here, looked at those Owl Creek mountains, or looked at the Bighorns or whatever, and it just brings the history alive with a buzz for me.
So I don't think there's many places I haven't been in Wyoming - obscure railway robbery sites. The Outlaws hit two trains in the late 1890s, one at Tipton, and the railroad track is still there, and then one at Wilcox. And the track bed’s long since moved. It was moved in about 1900 - but if you ask permission from the rancher, you can follow the old track bed down to where the bridge was, where the outlaws blew the train. It's about five miles off the dirt road.
But again, you stand there and think, this is the landscape these people saw. They were here doing these things. And it's not about being romantic about the outlaws. It's as much about honoring the honest settlers, the law men, the women who cooked and fed them, who plowed the fields and all that sort of stuff.
So my fascination is as much about the everyday folk of Wyoming for whom, in 1890 Wyoming had just become a state, it was still at the edge of the frontier.
Wendy Corr:
You are speaking my language, because that's the way I feel about history, and that's one of the wonderful things about Wyoming. Like, you've just put your finger on it - you can stand and look over the landscape, and the landscape is the same. The landscape is the same in so much of Wyoming as it was in 1890.
I want to touch on something that you're talking about, about the amount of time that Butch Cassidy spent in Buffalo. And you and I were talking before we got started with the podcast here, about the fact that Butch stayed in the Occidental Hotel.
And when you were going there, you were thinking, you know that he stayed there once - and then tell us about what you were telling me, about what you found out, about how many times he was actually there?
Mike Bell:
Well, the reason for this focus on that part of his life is in the early biographies of Cassidy, they talk about his childhood, of which there is much mythology. They talk about his time in Colorado, and then they jump to where he was arrested for horse theft, and came out of prison in 1896.
So there's a half a decade when he's in Wyoming, in the Bighorn Basin, and on the east side of the Bighorns, in Buffalo and other places, and up in Montana, that was overlooked.
So there's a little book by someone called Jill or Gil Bollinger that I bought in Buffalo a long, long time ago that made reference to the ledgers, and said the ledgers still survive, and there's a signature of Butch Cassidy's.
And I did some research and found that they were held in the American Heritage Center in Laramie. And I annoyed the archivist and said, If I come over, would I be able to see them? They said yeah, sure, you know whatever.
And they're hefty volumes. They are enormous. They're a good 18 inches wide and two feet deep and whatever. So I'm going through these volumes and, even forgetting Butch, all sorts of names from Wyoming history jump out. So people from Johnson County, Joe Lefors is there, Frank Canton is there, Jack Flagg is there of Johnson County War fame. Joe Rankin, one time Marshal of the Wyoming territory, and then the state is there.
And then I found a couple of pages from October 1890, and as I said to a friend of mine, Bill Bettenson, who's a great nephew of Butch Cassidy on that later on that trip, I said to him, I went to the archives, and I said, I'm really sorry, but I didn't find one signature by Butch Cassidy. And his face dropped a bit. And I said, I found 15.
Cassidy arrived in Buffalo in the fall of 1890 along with his pal, Al Hayner, about whom we know very little, along with a Mexican American called Manuel Armenta, about whom we now know a lot more. Then knocking about with the famous Scout, Frank Greward, who's operating out of Fort McKinney.
And they spend about four months in and around Buffalo, racing their horses at the fairs in Buffalo and Sheridan. And then when the Wounded Knee outbreak takes place, Cassidy's friend Al Haina works as a courier for the Army over in South Dakota at Pine Ridge, and there's a newspaper account of him finding a near dead Indian child on the battlefield and wrapping it up in a coat and bringing it back and helping the child to survive.
So there's a whole, a whole story here about Cassidy as a horse racer, about some of the people who Cassidy was hanging around with in Buffalo in that three, four month period. And there are all sorts of other names at the time that meant nothing, but now are much more significant.
There's a - for example, when Cassidy is arrested in 1891 for horse theft, he claims he bought the stolen horses from a Nebraska man called Billy Nutt. And there's a whole saga around that about the horse thief war that took place in Wyoming at the same time as the Johnson County War and killed far more people.
But Billy Nutt is in the Occidental registers, as do other horse thieves, known horse thieves. So it appears that there's a sort of a clique of horse thieves knocking around Buffalo in the late 1880s into early 1890. And then they spread out across the state and into Montana, into Nebraska, Idaho, whatever, running this huge horse thief ring that eventually gets Cassidy arrested and thrown into jail.
So Buffalo, having thought, well, Buffalo is a nice town. It's where Longmire is set, allegedly, and I've been there a few times beforehand. And of course, for Indian Wars enthusiasts, it's, you know, it's close to the Red Cloud battlefields, wagon box, so on. Fetterman, Fort Phil Kearny, so a great place for all sorts of history.
But all of a sudden, this whole new aspect of outlaw history emerged from those documents, and since then, I've found a great deal more, because that's taken me in other directions, in terms of Land Records and tax records and all sorts of other exciting things.
Wendy Corr:
This is just absolutely fascinating. My brain is blowing up here, because I grew up in Buffalo and so, and we lived just a few miles, as the crow flies, from Fort Phil Kearny. And so to have all of this knowledge!
And, too, I have to imagine it's difficult not to get drawn in by these side stories. There are so many stories and so many people you mentioned, just a couple of really fantastic characters that you, though, did not follow up on because your focus is on Butch Cassidy.
But let's take this opportunity, then, to talk about the rest of the English Westerners Society, because the other members of the English Westerners Society DO pick up those threads, and they have their own people and their own characters and their own trails that they follow in history.
Tell us about some of the ways that the English Westerners Society has discovered other really little known stories about the history of Wyoming.
Mike Bell:
Well, not just Wyoming, the West in general. So, I mean, the English Westerners Society has been around since 1954 - I was not around at the time, I hasten to add, not even I am that old.
It was formed in the 50s. This is the era we were just talking about, when there was little by way of material on the American frontier history available in this country. Certainly there's no internet. But, as I did, if you wanted to find out anything, it was air mail. There's that wafer thin paper that you wrote on back in the day.
So it was one of several societies across the world, but the only one in England set up to examine and promote the history of the American frontier, in the broader sense. Some of our members have become acknowledged experts in their field.
So one of our founding members is a guy called Fred Nolan. He died, sadly, a couple of years ago, but he was for a while the leading expert on Billy the Kid. He regularly traveled to Lincoln County, New Mexico, and his books remain the gold standard of work on Billy the Kid.
Chuck, called Bob Weybrow and his friend Michelle Pollard, they are specialists in the history of Jesse James. What those two do not know about Jesse James isn't worth knowing. Michelle now edits the James Farm journal, which is published in the United States, but of course, she can do it online.
We have people who have specialized in Buffalo Bill Cody. One of them, the main biographies of Cody, by a guy called Russell back in the the 60s, was written by an English Westerners member.
And our interests, or our members’ interests, really start as soon as the frontier is established. At the end of the colonial era, and settlers start moving west across the Blue Mountains and so forth, that's as far back as our interest goes.
We have people who are fascinated by the French and Indian Wars, about the war of 1812. We have a member who's just come back from the United States, Anna Sittina. She's fascinated by the history of John Henry Doc Holliday, and she's published learned papers on his life as and training as a dentist before he went out west.
We have members who are fascinated by particular themes, because we're not just about the outlaw aspects of the history. We're about everything. So there's a colleague of ours, Keith Robinson, who's made a study of fist fighting out west, because fist fighting, boxing, horse racing, all those sports as they were called, were common at the time, and Keith's done a study of fist fighting in the West.
We have people who are fascinated and specialize in the Indian Wars. So some of our publications dig deep into the life of General Custer, for example. We have members who followed up on Captain Miles Keogh, who died at Little Big Horn and went back into his Irish history. Francis Taunton, who was one of our founder members and Chairmen, did a lot of research in Ireland on Keogh’s history, found his family home, found that his family had been sent his dress uniform sometime before the Little Big Horn.
So we cover a whole range of interests. We are a broad church, but with lots of people like me who dig deep into particular subjects.
Wendy Corr:
How do you find each other. I mean, at what point does someone say, oh, there's this English, Westerners society you should join.
Mike Bell:
Well, back in the day, I think I must have seen something on a publication, because I joined in the late 70s, originally - obviously, I was only a child at the time. But it must have been something printed, because this predates the internet.
These days, people find us via our Facebook page. I mean, I have two Facebook pages, one my personal one, one just called Wyoming Outlaws, where I publish, guess what? Wyoming outlaw material. People find us through those routes.
Our website is about to be overhauled. The website's been around in the current form for many years now and is in need of an update, which it's getting. There's a lady, Anna, the Doc Holiday specialist, who's working on that for us.
So people find us through the web. They find us through publications. They find us through word of mouth. Every now and again we get somebody who will say, oh, a friend of mine is a member of your society. How do I join? So I say, give me your money, and because I'm the treasurer, not I'm not just robbing people blind, you understand, in the style of Butch Cassidy.
So yes, we have members around the world. We have many museums and archives in the United States that are members. We have individual members across the United States, in France, in Finland - for some reason, we've had a few Finns join us recently, which is excellent. People in Australia, France.
So we're a broad church, both in terms of our interests and in terms of our geographical spread.
Wendy Corr:
So the English Westerners Society is just the name. It does not mean just for people who are interested in the Old West, who live in England.
Mike Bell:
That's correct. And there was a debate when it started, about, should we be… Because we were talking before the podcast about the madnesses of English naming systems. So I live in England, which is part of Great Britain, which is part of the British Isles, etc, etc. It's all very complicated.
I'm not quite sure why it was called the English Westerners, because we have members in Scotland, Wales, Ireland, whatever. But our membership focus is England. But anybody can join. We have members, as I say, across the world.
Wendy Corr:
I find it just fascinating that there's so many people from a part of the world that is so old in itself, and that has so much history unto itself. We were talking, again, before the podcast about how much I absolutely love London and England, and just came back from Ireland, and the history there, and the roots there, and all of those things call to me very much.
What is it that makes you turn your back on all of that history, that is readily available at your fingertips by just walking down the street, and look all the way across the world and say, No, this, this is interesting to me.
Mike Bell:
Well, I don't so much turn my back on it, because I'm fascinated by many areas of history. I sort of look at it over my shoulder rather than turn my back on it.
Wendy Corr:
There you go.
Mike Bell:
I think in part, it's as we were talking about before, when I first got interested as a kid, my initial exposure was through television westerns and films, and part of that prompted an interest in terms of, well, there must be some real history behind this. It wasn't always Clint Eastwood or Robert Fuller riding the range in a little black hat. And so what's the real history?
And whereas in the ‘50s and ‘60s, you could go to a library in the UK and pick a history book off the shelf about English history or Scottish or whatever, that wasn't possible for American frontier history. So it was a curiosity about that, and that remains to this day for me.
My interest in American history and American frontier history is constantly trying to get behind the myth, to get to the reality, because I find the reality as fascinating as the myth. The myth, in and of itself, remains fascinating.
There’s a piece of work I'm doing now, which hopefully someday will see publication, which looks at how the myth of Bucha was created even while he was still alive. So by the time we get to when I got interested in the 1950s and 60s, the myth of Cassidy had long since parted company with the reality.
And that's why I keep coming back to Wyoming, because you only get to the reality by digging into courthouses, into archives, into old ranches. There are several Wyoming ranchers who've had to tolerate me turning up on their doorstep, knocking on the door and saying, Hello, I'm from England. Don you mind if I take some pictures, old boy, and they look at me slightly sideways, as if to say, well, he looks mad, but he could be harmless, so we'll let him at it.
And that takes us back to where we were before getting to the reality of these stories requires being there and being on the ground and walking through muddy fields on Owl creek or on Bridger creek or whatever, to find out where these people were and what still remains of their history.
Wendy Corr:
Let's talk about the work that your work that you're doing right now. How many publications? How many books have you published?
Mike Bell:
My books, if you count them all, 15, but some of those are anthologized, so there's a big one called Wyoming Outlaws, which is about 800 pages, but that contains work from three or four other books. So it's more of an anthology than whatever.
And that's been going on for about 15 years now, since I had enough material to put together in a book. And that was all kicked off, that started when I was on a horseback trip south of Yellowstone. And the two guys were talking about the place we were staying called Bliss Crick, which is just north of Turpin meadow, south of Yellowstone, north of Dubois, whatever.
And they were talking about this outlaw Jack Bliss. And that got me intrigued by him. That led me to some books, literally handwritten books I found in stores in Hoback and other places in that part of the world that connected Butch to this much wider horse thief war, which lasted from 1891 to 1894, the same time as the Johnson County War, but it was much more violent, much more murderous at the time.
And that's what got me into thinking, Well, I've got to write this all down. This needs documenting, because none of that stuff at the time featured as part of the history of Butch Cassidy.
So yes, and I - now you talked about not getting distracted. My problem is, I'll find a piece of information and disappear down a rabbit hole, a metaphorical rabbit hole, and come back thinking, Oh, look, I found something. I found something! And it just keeps me going and interested.
Wendy Corr:
I think that's fantastic. Now in your career, was it as an author, or, what has been your career?
Mike Bell:
No, I was, well, I trained as a historian. I did my degrees in history and qualified as a historian way back in the 80s, and I wanted to do something in academia, but at the time that wasn't possible. Times were quite hard.
So I ended up joining the civil service. I don't know why, because I am neither civil nor servile, but I got to the point where I thought, the job is good enough to afford me, quite literally, afford me the money to do research trips to Wyoming and study the material I love, while doing the day job.
And that lasted until I retired in 2015, and in those years, every other year or so, I traveled to Wyoming. That's been broken up, obviously, with COVID and various things recently. So less so, but I'm back this summer. So if you don't want to see me, lock your doors.
Wendy Corr:
Where will you be this summer? What's your plan? What's your research focus on this trip?
Mike Bell:
There's a conference of American historians in Reno where we're talking about a whole variety of things. And I'm going to be talking about some of the legends, that Cassidy came back. It won't solve the debate, but there are some people that have put forward named individuals saying, this is Butch, and when you dig into them, the stories don't really stack up, and I can prove that.
Then I'm traveling across to Wyoming. I'll be in Cheyenne, hopefully in the archives, possibly back in the American Heritage Center in Laramie, although I'm not sure if I need to go back there. Definitely in Thermopolis, because I'm going to be doing a book signing there, I hope, and doing some more research in their museum.
Probably Sheridan and buffalo, because I'm pursuing some research leads around Cassidy and other outlaws who are in Buffalo and Sheridan in 1893-94. I'll be there for about three weeks. Two, three weeks, charging around the state, annoying ranchers, archivists, historians, court clerks, whatever.
Wendy Corr:
That's fantastic. You'll have to let us know when your book signing is, so that we can make sure to get that out there. Your book signing in Thermopolis, so the people who want to to come and pick up your book, but also maybe just pick your brain a little bit about the things that you're discovering on this particular jaunt.
Mike Bell:
That won’t take long.
Wendy Corr:
I beg to differ, sir, because your mind is full of so many stories! Before we run out of time, I want to make sure that we get a chance for you to tell, do you have a favorite story, a favorite moment in Butch Cassidy’s life that that sticks out to you, that is kind of your shining light? Or perhaps even something that you want to know about him that you haven't discovered yet.
Mike Bell:
There is so much still to discover about the man, simply because, like most outlaws, he wasn't - well, I used to joke about this, it would be so much easier for us historians if all the old west outlaws had worn T shirts saying “my name is…” And although that would have made life just so much easier for us.
There's still a lot to go at in the horse thief war between 1891 and ‘94, all sorts of characters and events that we don't yet know enough about.
When I did the book 10 years or so ago, I was discussing activities in southern Montana and the Yellowstone and in Wyoming, where posses went out after horse thieves, and, how should we say, dealt with them. Turns out, however, that some of the Montana men went all the way over into Idaho, and there's a whole set of activities there, violent activities, that need to be explored.
There are stories about Cassidy in the basin, about his trials, not just in the courthouse in Lander, but also in the Justice Court on Owl creek, about was he railroaded, or discussing whether he was railroaded.
It seems pretty clear that some of the heavyweight ranchers of the Bighorn Basin had decided that he was, as he probably was, guilty of horse theft. He was not going to get off on a technicality. He was going to go to prison.
There are all sorts of characters there that still need exploring. Owen Wister. Butch Cassidy met Owen Wister on Horse Creek, in what's now Dubois, back in the fall of 1889. And I published a little book a while ago, The Author and the Outlaw, which analyzes the evidence that the two of them met. And I need to do some more work on that.
At the time, Cassidy was a little known outlaw. Wister was struggling with, should he do law or write stories? And the two met in one of the two cabins that then existed in Dubois. There was nothing else around at the time, and they didn't know who they were. One was a down that cowboy. One was a dude from the east. So there's, there's a lot to still go at that.
Wendy Corr:That is fantastic, and very fascinating. Where can we get your books, Mike, or the books of the other members of the English Westerners Society?
Mike Bell:
If you go on to lulu.com, because we use that as a publisher, yeah, lulu.com and drop Mike Bell into the search engine, you'll find all my books on Cassidy and other outlaws like Kit Curry and the train robbers.
Equally, if you go onto the website, although it's a bit out of date now, that will show you some of the publications on other topics, Jesse James, etc, that are still available there. Hopefully, the museum in Thermopolis, the Hot Springs County Museum, has a small stock of some of my books.
Or you can contact me via the Facebook page, Wyoming Outlaws, and get them that way. All the money, by the way, supports the society. So because we're an educational organization, whatever money we make out of these publications goes back into the coffers to promote the American West.
Wendy Corr:
That is absolutely fantastic. Mike, this has been a fascinating conversation. And just the idea that we have so many people so far away who are just as fascinated with the place that we live in, that we call home as we are, it's just so heartening, and it brings people together across the continents. And I think that's fantastic.
And thank you for the work that you and your colleagues are doing to preserve and to tell these stories that have never been told.
Mike Bell:
Well, I don't regard it as work. My family say it's an obsession. I'm obsessed by dead American outlaws. I regard it as historical research into the social mores and criminal activities of certain individuals in the late 19th century. That's my excuse. I'm sticking to it.
Wendy Corr:
That sounds very proper and very academic. So, we'll stick with that. That sounds good. Mike Bell, thank you for your time today. Thank you for this opportunity to hear these stories that we've never heard before.
And I hope that all of you have found it as fascinating as I have, and I'm very much looking forward to delving a little bit deeper into these amazing stories of the Old West here in Wyoming that the English Westerners Society is bringing to light.
Thanks for joining us on the podcast today, Mike, thank you for being with us. Folks, have a fantastic week. Stay tuned! Next week, we have a really awesome podcast. All of our podcasts are really awesome, but you're not going to want to miss next week as well.
And if you have an idea for somebody that should be highlighted on The Roundup, please let us know, and we'll put them on the list. The list is long, but folks, have a fantastic week.
