Billy the Kid

by Robert M. Utley

  4. Barney Mason interview, Las Vegas Gazette, June 16, 1881. Mason calls the site of the stampede Consios Springs, which I think is a reporter’s or printer’s corruption of Conejos. Mason also says Billy went from these springs to Buffalo Arroyo, stole another horse, and made his way to Sumner. Buffalo Arroyo would have taken him to Sumner by a longer route, which does not seem logical.

  5. Garrett, Authentic Life, 140–41; Las Vegas Gazette, May 12 and June 16, 1881.

  6. Tombstone Epitaph, June 16, 1881.

  7. Garrett, Authentic Life, 142.

  8. Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe), July 21, 1881.

  9. Garrett, Authentic Life, 142–43.

  10. Poe’s wife wrote an admiring but informative biography of her husband. Sophie A. Poe, Buckboard Days, 2d ed., introduction by Sandra L. Myres (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1981).

  11. John W. Poe, The Death of Billy the Kid, introduction by Maurice G. Fulton (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1933), 12–15. Poe wrote this account sometime early in the twentieth century, and it was first published in a British magazine in 1919. A Roswell bank president, Poe died in 1923.

  Poe portrays Garrett as so incredulous of the report that only with the greatest difficulty could he be persuaded to go to Fort Sumner. Garrett says he acted on the strength of Brazil’s letter, and he does not even mention Poe’s tip. I think that both reports prompted the decision and that, despite apprehension that it would be wasted effort, Garrett made the decision without any resistance.

  The son of Tip McKinney, another Garrett deputy, stated in 1969 that Poe’s information really came from Pete Maxwell, who wanted Billy removed from influence on his sister Paulita. Thus the story of the informant in the hay loft was concocted to protect Maxwell from retaliation by Billy’s friends. See Leon Metz, Pat Garrett: The Story of a Western Lawman (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1973), 98. This is hard to credit, if for no other reason than that time is a relentless enemy to conspiracies. Sooner or later, they tend to unravel. Even the Kid’s staunchest friends would have been unlikely to harm Maxwell, who was not only well liked but also an economic power in the Fort Sumner area. Moreover, Poe was a stranger recently arrived from Texas. Maxwell did not know him, or he Maxwell, as Poe himself divulged. Had Maxwell wanted to squeal on Billy, it would surely have been to Garrett. Finally, by the time Poe wrote his account, he would have had no reason to preserve such a fiction. It is not even hinted in any other credible source.

  12. Garrett says McKinney was in Lincoln. Poe says he joined at Roswell.

  Many and detailed accounts of the happenings of July 14, 1881, have been printed, a few with documentation, most without. Besides Garrett and Poe, who were indisputably firsthand witnesses and participants, the sources, when identified, are mostly Fort Sumner residents, and they represent almost as many versions as there were residents. Poe wrote some thirty years afterward, but he had a good memory and a reputation for honesty. Garrett left three accounts, two at the time and the third within a year: (1) Garrett’s report to the governor of New Mexico, Fort Sumner, July 15, 1881, widely printed in the press (I have used the Rio Grande Republican [Las Cruces], July 23, 1881); (2) Garrett interviews with newsmen in Las Vegas Optic, July 18, 1881, and Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe), July 21, 1881; and (3) Authentic Life, 143–49. Garrett may have had reasons for tampering with the truth, but until credible evidence can be presented to show that he did, and to show how he did, his testimony must be given more weight than anyone else’s. Without apology, therefore, I lean primarily on Garrett and secondarily on Poe. Tracing the many accounts of Billy’s activities on this day is like chasing a prairie zephyr. I shall indulge it in restrained moderation.

  13. Garrett, Authentic Life, 144, says they went in to talk with Maxwell; Poe, Death of Billy the Kid, 28, says that they intended to watch the house. I think both were motives, as logically they should have been. Again Poe portrays Garrett as the negativist, convinced that Billy was nowhere about and ready to give up. Poe takes credit for the idea of consulting Maxwell and then only after the three had watched the town plaza from hiding for a couple of hours. Since Poe did not know Maxwell or his reputation and Garrett did, I think Poe’s memory played tricks on him.

  14. Garrett mentions this man, but strangely Poe does not. His wife Sophie, however, does refer to him in Buckboard Days, 109–10.

  15. The house to be watched is usually assumed to have been where Celsa Gutierrez lived with her husband, Sabal. This could have been kept under observation from a point behind and slightly to the west of Bob Hargrove’s saloon (see map), although the view of other buildings would have been narrowly restricted. A point farther east would have afforded a wider view, but chiefly of the rear of the old barracks, which would have blocked direct sight of Celsa’s apartment. Another possibility is that Garrett may have intended to keep watch on Manuela Bowdre’s place. If she still lived in the old hospital building, this latter location in the orchard would have been a perfect point of observation. And finally, the Maxwell house itself, where Paulita Maxwell lived, cannot be altogether discounted.

  16. Garrett, Authentic Life, 145. Poe does not mention this incident.

  17. Lobato and Silva gave their stories to former New Mexico Governor Miguel Otero, who reproduced them within quotation marks in The Real Billy the Kid: With New Light on the Lincoln County War (New York: Rufus Rockwell Wilson, 1936), 154–58. Their recollections are entitled to consideration, but Otero’s book is so bad that one hesitates to believe anything in it.

  18. A belief persists that Billy was armed only with a butcher knife. Besides being highly uncharacteristic of him to be caught anywhere without a gun, both Garrett and Poe say he had a pistol (his Colt .41 “self-cocker,” according to both Garrett and a letter from Sunnyside dated July 15, 1881, that appeared in the Las Vegas Optic, July 18). Although Garrett and Poe had reason to want the world to believe that Billy carried a pistol, their testimony that he did can be disqualified only by equally persuasive evidence that he did not. I am not aware of any.

  19. Poe, Death of Billy the Kid, 31–35.

  20. Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe), July 21, 1881.

  21. Poe’s account of what happened after the shooting (Death of Billy the Kid, 39–44) is more detailed and persuasive than any of Garrett’s.

  22. Ibid., 40–41. Deluvina Maxwell also described the scene: “Pete took a candle and held it around in the window and Pat stood back in the dark where he could see into the room. When they saw that he was dead, they both went in.” Deluvina denied the prevalent story that Garrett sent her inside with the candle to see if Billy was dead. Deluvina Maxwell interview with J. Evetts Haley, Fort Sumner, N. Mex., June 24, 1927, PHPHM.

  23. This is from Charles Frederick Rudulph, “Los Bilitos”: The Story of “Billy the Kid” and His Gang (New York: Carlton Press, 1980), 252. This is an “interpretive translation” by Louis L. Branch of Rudulph’s manuscript in Spanish and therefore must be handled with caution. Rudulph, however, brings two elements of authority to his account. First, as a nineteen-year-old, he came to Fort Sumner the next day with his father, Milnor Rudulph, who headed the coroner’s jury. Second, through his mother and, later, through his own wife, he was part of the Hispanic community and was in a better position than most to know how they reacted.

  24. Poe, Death of Billy the Kid, 44.

  25. Rudulph, “Los Bilitos,” 252–53, which also reproduces the report of the coroner’s jury.

  26. Poe, Death of Billy the Kid, 42. Both Poe and Rudulph have the body moved the night before, after the shooting. However, the coroner’s report, executed on July 15, explicitly states that the jurors proceeded to a room in the Maxwell house where they examined the body.

  27. Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe), July 21, 1881.

  18. THE LEGEND

  1. New Southwest and Grant County Herald (Silver City, N. Mex.), July 23, 1881; New York Sun, July 22, 1881.

  2. “Billy the Kid’s Exploit,” National Pol
ice Gazette, May 21, 1881.

  3. These and more than four hundred additional outpourings over the next seventy years are described in J. C. Dykes, Billy the Kid: The Bibliography of a Legend (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1952).

  4. Most of my biographical details come from sketches in William A. Keleher, Violence in Lincoln County, 1869–1881: A New Mexico Item (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1957), 73–75; and idem, The Fabulous Frontier: Twelve New Mexico Items (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1962), 144–49. The characterization is from Lily (Casey) Klasner, My Girlhood among Outlaws, ed. Eve Ball (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1972), 116–23. Lily knew him well. Upson’s letters to relatives are in the Fulton Collection, UAL.

  5. Las Vegas Gazette, October 22, 1881, stated that the book had already been written and would soon be published, which means that it was completed in record time after the death of the Kid. Quoted in Keleher, Violence in Lincoln County, 75.

  6. Letter quoted in Keleher, Fabulous Frontier, 147.

  7. The thesis of the social bandit was propounded as an English phenomenon in Eric J. Hobsbawm, Social Bandits and Primitive Rebels (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1959). For its application to the American West, see Richard White, “Outlaw Gangs of the Middle Border: American Social Bandits,” Western Historical Quarterly 12 (October 1981): 387–408.

  8. Paul A. Hutton, “Billy the Kid as Seen in the Movies,” Frontier Times 57 (June 1985): 24–29.

  9. For scholarly assessments of the legend, see especially Stephen Tatum, Inventing Billy the Kid: Visions of the Outlaw in America, 1881–1981 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982); Kent Ladd Steckmesser, The Western Hero in History and Legend (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965); Jon Tuska, Billy the Kid: A Handbook (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986); Alfred Adler, “Billy the Kid: A Case Study in Epic Origins,” Western Folklore 10 (April 1951): 143–52; and J. Frank Dobie, “Billy the Kid,” Southwest Review 14 (Spring 1929): 314–20. Dykes, Billy the Kid, surveys the published literature to 1952, but of course there has been much since that has not been systematically recorded.

  10. “Brushy Bill” was the most vocal and persistent claimant. He even appeared in person before the governor of New Mexico to ask for a pardon. His case is stated, although not widely regarded as proved, in C. L. Sonnichsen and William V. Morrison, Alias Billy the Kid (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1955). Advocates of conspiracy seize upon perceived suspicious circumstances to convert possibility into fact. The theoretical possibility exists that Billy the Kid was not killed at Fort Sumner in 1881. To prove that he was not, however, demands hard evidence that has yet to be revealed. Until that day arrives, we must believe that if Billy does not rest beneath the sod in the old Fort Sumner cemetery, it is not because he was not buried there on July 15, 1881.

  11. John P. Meadows, in collaboration with Maurice G. Fulton, “Billy the Kid as I Knew Him,” MS, c. 1931, Rasch Collection, LSM; Henry Hoyt, A Frontier Doctor, Lakeside Classics ed., ed. Doyce B. Nunis, Jr. (Chicago: R. R. Donnelley & Sons, 1979), 154.

  12. William Chisum, interview with Allen A. Erwin, Los Angeles, 1952, AHS.

  13. Meadows and Fulton, “Billy the Kid as I Knew Him.”

  14. Deluvina Maxwell, interview with J. Evetts Haley, Fort Sumner, N. Mex., June 24, 1927, PHPHM; Daily New Mexican (Santa Fe), July 21, 1881.

  15. Meadows and Fulton, “Billy the Kid as I Knew Him.”

  SOURCES

  Any modern student who follows Billy the Kid quickly meets several indefatigable researchers who have scouted the trail in the past. The Kid commands a devoted following of aficionados, many of whom have spent a lifetime searching for material bearing on his life and death. Those who made today’s trail substantially easier to follow were Maurice Garland Fulton, Robert N. Mullin, and Philip J. Rasch.

  An English professor at New Mexico Military Institute in Roswell, Fulton for three decades collected and studied material relating to the Kid and the Lincoln County War. He interviewed and corresponded with many who knew of Billy’s exploits through firsthand experience. Although he made poor use of his collection, he left a rich legacy for subsequent researchers. The Fulton Collection may now be consulted at the University of Arizona Library in Tucson. Also at this repository are the papers of Rev. Taylor F. Ealy, an observant witness of happenings in Lincoln during the war.

  Mullin, an oil executive whose hobby drew him to Fulton, amassed a huge body of material. It is of uneven quality and often difficult to trace to origins, but it contains much of value. Mullin corresponded regularly with Fulton, and abundant Fultonia survives in the Mullin Collection. It is housed at the Haley History Center in Midland, Texas.

  Philip J. Rasch also spent years pursuing the Kid, sometimes in collaboration with Mullin. He wrote many articles on the subject and donated his extensive collection to the Lincoln State Monument in Lincoln, New Mexico.

  A special value of these three collections is the shortcut they offer researchers. These men labored for years to assemble Kid items from conventional sources, such as newspapers. Their efforts save long hours sifting through huge stacks of material or endless frames of eye-straining microfilm.

  Uniquely valuable are the pioneering researches of J. Evetts Haley, premier historian of Texas cows and cowmen. In the 1920s and 1930s Haley interviewed many participants in the Lincoln County War and the hunt for Billy the Kid. He intended to write a biography of the Kid, but turned to other projects when Walter Noble Burns published The Saga of Billy the Kid. The transcripts of the interviews are housed in the Haley History Center at Midland, Texas. They are more carefully organized and recorded than Fulton’s and thus more useful. Not least of their importance is the personal perspective offered by Haley himself, a venerable fixture of the Center.

  The reminiscent accounts are all of interest, but have to be used carefully. By the time they were transcribed, the subjects suffered from bad memory and were influenced by the romanticization that had suffused the literature. (The vivid writing of Burns’s Saga affected the memory even of participants.) These recollections are better for local color and characterization of people than for chronology or events. For some features of the story, however, they are the only source. Consulted in conjunction with contemporary sources, they can contribute importantly.

  A storehouse of original documentation is the New Mexico State Records Center and Archives in Santa Fe, which contains the Territorial Archives of New Mexico, a scattering of county records, and the records of the territorial district courts. Pertinent are court records for Lincoln, Doña Ana, and Socorro counties in the Third Judicial District and San Miguel County in the First Judicial District. Court records consist of docket books recording the sequence of actions in individual cases, journals chronologically recording courtroom actions, and case files containing various documents relating to individual cases, such as indictments and arrest warrants. Court records are aggravating to use, both because most of the key case files have not survived and because of extraordinary verbosity that yields the most minimal information. Even so, they are indispensable. The territorial district court also functioned as federal district court. Records of federal cases are housed at the Denver Federal Records Center of the National Archives.

  The NMSRCA also contains copies of the WPA interviews conducted in the 1930s and copies of important historical documents collected and authored by Territorial Secretary William G. Ritch. The original Ritch Collection is in the Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

  Federal records are critical to understanding the Lincoln County War and occasionally throw light on the doings of Billy the Kid. Preserved in the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, D.C., most are available on microfilm.

  The most important federal document is the voluminous report of Frank Warner Angel, investigator for the Departments of Justice and the Interior, submitted in October 1878. The Angel Report contains forty-three deposi
tions sworn by active participants on both sides of the Lincoln County War, including the Kid. The citation is “Report on the Death of John H. Tunstall,” File 44–4–8–3, RG 60, Records of the Department of Justice. A complete copy is in the Victor Westphall Collection, NMSRCA.

  Also valuable are military documents, especially a special file relating to the Lincoln County War: RG 94, AGO LR (Main Series), 1871–80, File 1405 AGO 1878, available on microfilm as M666, Rolls 397 and 398. Essential too is the record of the Dudley Court of Inquiry, featuring the testimony of more than sixty witnesses (including the Kid) together with annexed documents. The Dudley Court Record is Records Relating to the Dudley Inquiry (QQ 1284), RG 153, Judge Advocate General’s Office. Other military records include RG 393, LR, Hq. District of New Mexico, on microfilm as M1088; the same, LS, M1072; and LR and LS of the post of Fort Stanton, RG 393, not on microfilm.

  Pertinent civilian records include RG 48, Interior Department Territorial Records: New Mexico (M364); and Interior Department Appointment Papers (M750). Indian Bureau records, which throw light on civilian affairs in Lincoln County, are RG 75, Office of Indian Affairs, LR(M234); Records of the New Mexico Superintendency, 1849–80 (T21); Report of Inspector E. C. Watkins, Report No. 1981, June 27, 1878, Inspectors’ Reports, 1873–80 (containing affidavits of thirty-five witnesses); and Special Case 108, Reduction of the Mescalero Reservation.