and occasionally robbing and killing ranchers. But Murrieta was starting to pay a price. Several gang members had been killed, and a few had been captured and lynched.
A startled California legislature met and formed a law enforcement group called the California Rangers. Harry Love became its leader, and tracking down Murrieta became one of Love's priorities. He surprised the outlaws in camp, but they escaped, Murrieta subsequently blundering into an ambush by Indians, who captured, robbed, and then released the gang members.
On July 12, 1853, Love reached San Juan Bautista and spent the next two weeks combing the area, asking questions, and making occasional arrests. Then he and his men unexpectedly encountered Murrieta and his vago.,ietaz on July 24. A fight immediately started. The rangers killed four men and captured two. Joaquin Murrieta was believed to be one of the dead. Another was Three Fingered Jack, Murrieta's second in command.
Both heads were cut off and placed in jars, as was the hand of Three Fingered Jack. For years the head of Murrieta was exhibited in a San Francisco museum; it was lost or destroyed during the 1906 California earthquake.
So, did the rangers really have the head of Murrieta? Probably they did, although positive proof certainly did not, and does not, exist. The issue remains controversial, although Capt. Harry Love collected the $1,000 reward.
Si 15.4 LOVE, HARRY
MUSE, Herbert E. (a.k.a. H. E.) (1850-1935)
Certainly his is not a well-known name in the annals of western frontier marshals and sheriffs, but possibly it should be, for H. E. Muse was a veteran peace officer, and in southwestern New Mexico he was a terror to bad men. Born in Cambridge, Maryland, on June 9, 1850, Muse migrated to Texas. After acquiring cowboy skills, he wandered westward to Grant County, New Mexico, where for a while he tended cattle. It was there, though, that H. E. Muse tossed away the lariat and branding iron, accepting employment as deputy under Sheriff Harvey Howard Whitehill.
Stationed at Paschal, a copper-mining community in the Burro Mountains 12 miles south of Silver City, Muse graciously offered his house overnight to a family passing through-Judge H. C. McComas, his wife, and their six-year-old son, Charles. The McComas family declined, opting to make a few more miles before stopping. Muse was stunned when he saw them next. On March 29, 1883 in the wee morning hours, Muse at the head of a squad of 15 resolute citizens rushed to investigate reports that the McComas group had been massacred on the road to Lordsburg. At dawn, Muse who was ranging ahead of the platoon, discovered the naked and brutalized body of Mrs. McComas, slain by Apaches. Respectfully, he removed his coat and covered her before others reached the scene. Shortly thereafter the remains of judge McComas were discovered. Little Charley McComas was a prisoner.
Two years later, in 1885, Muse became town marshal for Silver City. Over time, he arrested the notorious "Salome." He faced down Dave Cooney, who was pointing a six-shooter at him at the time; tracked down a band of burglars; and arrested a "dead hard game" Chinaman appropriately named Ah Bang. In 1886, the U.S. government appointed him as a U.S. deputy marshal.
During the course of his law enforcement career throughout Grant County, in such communities as
Tyrone, Santa Rita, Paschal, Pinos Altos, and Silver City, Muse "won a widespread reputation. Few had the temerity or reckless judgment to question his authority. Those who did, without exception, regretted it and some who elected to fight it out with Muse paid with their lives, as he was a dead shot and devoid of fear." So said the local newspaper reporter.
At the time of his death on October 14, 1935, at age 85, Muse was the court crier for the Grant County District Court.
MUSGRAVE, George (a.k.a. Jesse Williams; Jeff Davis; Jesse Miller) (1874-1947)
This outlaw, born in Texas, associated himself early with the Black Jack Christian and the High Fives outlaw bands. On October 19, 1896, he killed George Parker during a Diamond-A roundup along the Rio Feliz, near Roswell, New Mexico. After Black Jack Christian died, Musgrave was arrested at Fronteras, Mexico; he was not released until December 1897. At that point he dropped out of sight, not reappearing until being arrested on the North Platte in Nebraska during late 1909. He went to trial for the earlier killing of Parker but was acquitted.
NAVY Colt 1851
This weapon is called the "Navy Colt" because of an engraved scene on the cylinder depicting a naval encounter. One loaded this percussion revolver from the front of the cylinder and aligned its chamber with the barrel by cocking the hammer. When loaded with 25 grains of black powder and a round lead ball, the 1851 Navy Colt had the punch of a modern .38 Special.
NEAGLE, Dave (?-1925)
This lawman didn't reach the historical spotlight until he showed up in Tombstone, Arizona, as one of Sheriff John Behan's deputies during 1881. When town marshal Virgil Earp was wounded in 1881, Neagle replaced him as the chief of police. However, Neagle lost the next election. He allegedly killed a Mexican desperado in Tombstone before leaving for Montana, where he became a U.S. deputy marshal. With a judge under his protective custody in Lathrop, California, Neagle shot and killed another judge whom the lawman perceived as threatening his prisoner. Neagle died in Oakland, California.
SEE (YISO; LEVY, JAMES H.
NECKTIE Party
A necktie party was a lynching, usually by vigilantes. Necktie parties generally occurred on the spot and without much deliberation.
SEE 90! VIGILANCE COMMITTEES
NEVILL, Charles L. (1855-1906)
This Texas Ranger was born in Carthage, Alabama, but arrived in Texas at least by 1874, when he joined the Frontier Battalion of the Texas Rangers. He fought Indians and was present at Round Rock when the mortally wounded Sam Bass surrendered to him. Three years later, in 1881, Nevill rode with Capt. George Baylor when some of Victorio's Apache braves made their last stand in the Diablo Mountains. Not long afterward, Nevill, plus a surveyor and several other hearty souls, became the first ever to travel by boat down Santa Elena Canyon, in the Big Bend.
Nevill became sheriff of Presidio County, Texas, in 1882, and for a while put together a ranching partnership with former ranger James Gillett. After that he moved to San Antonio, where he died.
BASS, SAM; BAYLOR, GEORGE WYTHE; GILLETT, JAMES BUCHANAN; TEXAS RANGERS
NEWCOMB, George (a.k.a. Bitter Creek; Slaughter's Kid) (1867-1895)
This desperado left home in Kansas while still a young boy and wound up as a cowboy on the Slaughter Ranch in Texas. Here he became Slaughter's Kid. From Texas he moved into the Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma, where as a cowboy he grew to love the lyrics, "I"m a Wild Wolf from Bitter Creek, and it's my night to howl." He sang it so often that the cowboys started referring to him as Bitter Creek.
Before much time had passed, Bitter Creek Newcomb joined first the Dalton Gang, and then the Doolin Gang. In July 1892, he and the Daltons rode into Adair, Oklahoma, robbed the train depot, and then tried to hold up the train. A year later the Doolin Gang rode into Ingalls, Oklahoma, and was shot to pieces by lawmen. Bitter Creek and Bill Doolin barely escaped.
A $5,000 reward now went on Bitter Creek's head. Outlaw Charley Pierce made the mistake of tagging along when Newcomb decided to hide out near Ingalls, at the Dunn Brothers Ranch. On May 1, 1895, the Dunn brothers ambushed the outlaws for the reward money as they left their barn.
CANTON, FRANK; DALTON BROTHERS; DOOLIN, WILLIAM M.
NEWMAN, Norman (a.k.a. Henry Reed) (?-1899)
This outlaw may or may not have been born in Oklahoma, but he killed a man in Greer County in Oklahoma, in November 1898. With the assistance of a neighboring farmer, Perry Cox, he broke jail. Newman fled to the San Augustine Ranch in Dona Ana County, New Mexico; the property was owned by William W. Cox, probably a brother or relative of Perry Cox. At this time Newman changed his name to Billy Reed, but that did not help any, because Pat Garrett, sheriff of Dona Ana County, tracked Newman to the Cox Ranch. During the resultant shootout on October 7, 1899, Garrett's deputy, Jose Espalin killed Newman.
S$e
c!iSo; COX, WILLIAM WEBB; GARRETT, PATRICK FLOYD JARVIS
Norman Newman (University of Texas at El Paso Archives)
NEW Mexico Mounted Police
When Texas and Arizona organized ranger forces, dozens of outlaws from both places headed for New Mexico. There it was illegal to carry openly a sixshooter in a public place. Saloons were ordered closed on Sundays, and gambling was illegalalthough these statutes were considered jokes, and fines were minimal. However, to meet its territorywide law enforcement responsibilities, New Mexico on February 15, 1905 organized what it called the New Mexico Mounted Police. This single company comprised 11 men, each enlisting for two years: eight privates, a sergeant, a lieutenant, and a captain. The privates drew $40 a month, and out of that they had to furnish their own weapons (usually a Winchester rifle and a Colt .45); the territory provided the ammunition. Each man had to supply his own mount, plus a packhorse, and pay for their care and feeding. Their uniforms resembled Rough Rider clothing; the captain wore a different-style hat. Each officer had a silver shield, although that later switched to a star and various other designs. The captain earned $200 a month, the lieutenant $100, and the sergeant $60.
John F. Fullerton, a Socorro County cattleman, took charge as captain, his lieutenant being Cipriano Baca, a U.S. deputy marshal as well as a former Luna County sheriff. The officers and one private set up their headquarters in Socorro. The remaining rangers scattered everywhere, enforcing the law across 122,000 square miles of territory. Although the unit never had any official name except the New Mexico Mounted Police, in popular parlance the group usually went by the tag of Fullerton's Rangers.
Officer Jessie Lefettie Avant (usually called Fate Avant) became the first officer to kill a man, doing so on August 24, 1905, when he shot a burglar named Bob Rusher at a Capitan store. Rusher had made a bad decision to shoot it out rather than hold up his hands and surrender. Otherwise, during this first year or so of operation, the Mounted Police killed just the one man, capturing 72.
A new governor, in a political move, replaced Fullerton with Fred Fornoff in 1906. Fornoff moved the Mounted Police headquarters to the Santa Fe capital building, where it remained for 14 years. Fornoff's boys seemed especially effective at rounding up outlaws, preventing holdups, and sometimes arresting fraudulent public officials. On one occasion during a dangerous confrontation, mounted policemen John Beal and Bob Putman cowed a mob of gamblers and others in a saloon near Mogollon.
In 1909, the territorial legislature reduced the Mounted Police to four rangers and two officers. However, these officers were augmented by a "Special" Mounted Police; none of its members were salaried. All of these individuals became state policemen a year later, however, when President William Taft granted statehood to New Mexico on January 6, 1912. A year after that, in the spring of 1913, the state police arrested several state senators and charged them with taking bribes. The state senate then refused to pass appropriations to support the state police, and on December 1, 1913, the
New Mexico state police department went out of business.
Governor William McDonald opened his contingency funds during 1914-17 to retain one state police officer for New Mexico-Fred Lambert. This officer worked the entire state. During World War I the New Mexico State War Council reactivated the force, authorizing 16 men. By 1919, there were five sergeants and 16 police patrolling the state. Later that year, all of them invaded Gallup, where they restored order during a coal mine strike. Then on February 15, 1921, the Mounted Police again bowed to the whims of politics and was abolished until the spring of 1933, when the state authorized what it called the New Mexico Motor Patrol. That also was discontinued two years later, on February 25, 1935, when New Mexico created its present state police force.
NIX, Evett Dumas (1861-1946)
This Oklahoma lawman was born in Kentucky. He moved to Guthrie, Oklahoma, where in early 1893 he became a U.S. marshal. His field deputies were a Who's Who of early law enforcement: Heck Thomas, Frank Canton, Chris Madsen, Frank Lake, John Hixon, Ed Kelly, and Jim Masterson. Although he himself never made arrests, "he directed the work ... and his organization captured or killed more criminals and collected more rewards than did that of any other pioneer officer."
After his law enforcement career ended, Nix moved to Missouri and spent the remainder of his life in investment speculation. He died at St. Louis.
.366 O. CANTON, FRANK; FEDERAL MARSHALS AND DEPUTY MARSHALS; MADSEN, CHRISTIAN; MASTERSON, JAMES; THOMAS, HENRY ANDREW
NORTHFIELD Raid
People who tend dairy cows are not ordinarily considered fighters. They are inclined to be thrifty, sometimes salting money away in mattresses but generally trusting banks to do the right thing. Thus it seemed to the James-Younger gang in 1876 that the bank at Northfield, Minnesota, in the heart of dairy country, might be isolated in a sense from the rest of the state. The vault should be fat from sav ings, guarded by people who consumed a lot of cheese and rode fat horses, people more apt to panic than fight.
Thus the eight-man James-Younger gang rode north. The group consisted of Clell Miller, Jesse and Frank James, Jim, Cole, and Bob Younger, and a couple of others known as Charlie Pitts and Bill Styles. The plan had been to hit the bank in Mankato, Minnesota, but the outlaws noticed too many people standing in the street out front, so the gang shrugged and pushed on another 40 miles to Northfield. The decision was no doubt a good one, all things (except the end result) considered, but by far the best decision would have been to turn around and go home. The record doesn't indicate that anyone thought of that.
At Northfield, Jesse, Bob Younger, and Pitts went inside, while the others waited in the street to lay down covering fire when the three came running out. But things inside immediately went wrong. The cashier refused to open the vault, so the outlaws cut his throat and shot him. A teller was wounded when he fled for the door. Outside, a Swedish boy of 17 did not understand an order to turn around and go the other way. He was shot and killed.
Bill Styles went down, never to rise. Clell Miller, shot in the face as he tried to mount, turned his horse to leave, and at that moment a medical student shot him in the chest. He fell off his horse, dead. The Youngers and the James boys fled; Charlie Pittswhose real name was Samuel Wells-fled with them. When the Younger brothers and the James boys decided to split up, Pitts stayed with the Youngers, dying when the posse caught up with them. The Youngers went to prison. One of the possemen cut off an ear of Pitts, and the body went to a medical school. The James brothers escaped.
JAMES BROTHERS; WELLS, SAMUEL; YOUNGER BROTHERS
NYE, John A. (1832-1906)
John Nye went by many titles, farmer and merchant being perhaps the ones he preferred. But he is best known as a vigilante leader. He was born in New York but moved to Colorado and Montana at an early age. There he became one of five men to organize the state's vigilante movement. Over time they
executed many of the Plummer gang and brought a measure of peace and security to the mining camps. He Joined the Black Hills gold rush in 1876 and lived all over that part of the world. He died in Deadwood, South Dakota.
See C+Sc . PLUMMER, WILLIAM HENRY
NOTCH-CUTTERS
The Notch-Cutters took their name from an East Texas forested area known as the Yegua Knobs, near McDade, Texas. This group robbed, rustled, and murdered from the early 1860s to the early 1880s. In Texas, at least, the Notch-Cutters had been the first draft dodgers of the Civil War, supporting the Union almost every step of the way, and taking advantage of eastern Texas's shortage of manpower. Three county lines intersected the thick woods of Yegua Knob, thus making it difficult for law enforcement to be effective. The Notch-Cutters took their name not only from the forested thickets but from the fact that every time they murdered someone, they carved notches in the wooden grips of their revolvers.
A group of vigilantes was formed under George Milton and Tom Bishop to oppose the Notch-Cutters, and one hanging tended to lead to another. On May 4, 1874, the Notch-Cutter
s hung a black man from a tree limb, then shot his body full of holes. In January 1875, the vigilantes strung up two NotchCutters.
Both sides tended to rustle cattle, and the nearby Olive brothers Jay and Print, in particular objected to this practice. On March 22, 1876, these ranchers discovered two beeves lying butchered on the prairie, and later that evening caught two Notch-Cutters returning to pick them up. Gunmen working for the Olives shot them, then wrapped their bodies in cowhides and left them lying on the prairie as a warning to others. In retaliation, after dark on August 1, 1876, nearly two dozen Notch-Cutters attacked the Olive Ranch, killing Jay Olive, wounding Print, and burning the house.
On June 22, 1877, at two o'clock in the morning, masked vigilantes caught four Notch-Cutters at a dance. The vigilantes rode away, leaving all four hanging from a tree limb. Things quieted down now for a while, but in 1883 the killings began again. The Notch-Cutters killed Lee County deputy sheriff Isaac Heffington on December 1.
Then on Christmas Eve of 1883, the vigilantes took three Notch-Cutters into custody, tied their arms, helped them mount their horses, then swung them from a tree limb. On Christmas Day the blood literally flowed in McDade; gunfights roared all over town. The end result was a half-dozen or so wounded and trials that went nowhere. But this
final spasm of violence had resolved something. The terror and the bloodshed had to end. On December 27, 34 vigilantes met in McDade. They agreed upon a list of all known Notch-Cutters. Each one received a visit and a message-stop the terror or die at the end of a rope. The Notch-Cutter group never held another meeting, and no additional lynchings occurred. The terror ended.
The Encyclopedia of Lawmen, Outlaws, and Gunfighters Page 38