#9 /#8 /#7 /#6 / #5

#4 /#3 / #2 / #1

Every month the Black Horse Western group airs western related issues, whether they be on writing, books, magazines, comics, tv series or films. Here is round-up of some recent items including an original piece of flash fiction.

Kerby Jackson on his family history

My great grandmother was raised during the last few years of what was essentially known as the wild era, while her parents lived during the its heyday. Her father was the sort of man who would give you the shirt off his back. He worked hard, he helped his neighbor, he was quite religious, he believed he could do anything (though he did not believe it practical to seek to be anything other than ordinary) and he genuinely believed in the whole Western concept that land was everything and that if you worked it hard, it would work for you in return. He believed in law and order. He broke horses, he ran a trapline, he farmed, etc. - all the typical average jobs a man did in those days, including once tending to some sheep in cattle country.

The only two rather non-typical jobs he held were trapping stock killing wolves for the state government and he also worked as the Indian agent at a reservation. In otherwords, he was pretty typical of the average Westerner and he also had all the good qualities that you see in films or read in books. However, at the same time, he was also a bit on the salty side. He carried a .45 and a rather wicked looking Bowie knife as part of his everyday dress, as well as a Winchester 30-30 on his saddle (in photos, his holster is very clearly tied down which is generally the mark of someone who thought he was rather handy with it and may need to draw it easily) and we know that he was involved in at least one gunfight (though it wasn't exactly high noon style and seemed to be more of a running fight from cover to cover opposed to something you might see in a movie) and also took part in at least one vigilante hanging (quite likely more).

He also collected indian artifacts rather voraciously (his collection is now scattered throughout several musuems) and he apparently had a rather ghoulish habit of digging in old indian graves in search of them whenever he stumbled upon them. Later on, when he was prompted by a distant relative to write his memoirs, which were later published, he simply remarked that although his packing a gun, engaging in a shootout, a vigilante hanging and digging up dead indians for beads was frowned upon during the time he was writing, he noted that at the time they took place, they were viewed as nothing out of the ordinary.

Much the same way, my great grandmother also once told the story that at one point they moved closer to town as their parents had work in town and they had left her and her brother and sister there in the cabin late into the night. Apparently, the town dandy heard that they were there on their own and he decided to play a joke on them by scratching and beating on the cabin walls hoping to scare them.

These kids are 10, 7 and 6 years old and so how do they respond? While he was scratching on the door, they told whoever it was that they'd kill him if he didn't leave and when the guy laughed at them, my great grandmother proceeded to blow a hole through the top of the door with a 30-30 (which is still in the family) and just about took the guy's head off.

They never saw actually him, but he did leave his bullet perforated hat behind so they knew who the man was. And when one of my cousins asked her 80 odd years later what she would have done if that bullet had been lower, she just said "Well, I had really intended to kill him, so it wouldn't have been that big of a deal".

And at the same time that she wouldn't have batted an eye over shooting someone who she figured had it coming, she was also deeply religious and would have given the shirt off the back to help someone she didn't know. And that is just typical of people of that period. On one hand, they hold these extremely high moral standards, while on the other hand, if you cross into territory where you shouldn't have gone, they won't think twice about killing you. Incidentally, to continue the story above, the day after my great grandmother took a shot at the guy through the door, my gr. gr. grandfather was very upset about it and put the word out that he was looking for him and the man promptly caught the next train out of town after a local suggested that it would likely wind up in a shooting).

Review of the Assassination of Jess James (spoilers)

This might ruin the movie for you, but even if I didn't tell you, it might be ruined for you as well.

Long. Drawn out. Psychological. True to the times, I think. Happening in 1882, I wondered why most of the characters used cap and ball pistols (probably made over for cartridges), even one of the brass framed Colts that hardly survived the Civil War. The settings were authentic. The dialogue seemed to be also. The coward Bob Ford was well played and you (I) hated him by the time he shot Jesse in the back.

That said, Jesse was no angel and got more and more paranoid. Yet in the end, it felt like he committed suicide. Even in the course of the film he asks Ford if he ever felt like committing suicide. Brad Pitt is a good Jesse, I think, but if you like action westerns, this is not your cup of tea. At nearly three hours, it is far more drawn out than I cared for. Which is strange, as I didn't get that feeling with Wyatt Earp (Costner's version).

So, conclusion. I'm glad I went to see Jesse James. It's not a traditional western. I won't buy the DVD or go to see it again in any other form.

Violence and the Western

#1: Has anyone read St Agnes' Stand by Thomas Eidson? I'm reading it and Howard's "Pistolero" at the same time! St Agnes' Stand doesnt have a lot of violence in it, but when it does, I have to stop reading for a while to get over it. There are some very graphic scenes where Mexicans are being tortured by Apaches and it makes my stomach churn. All in all, it is an excellent read (Saddlebums did a review about it a few days ago.) But do the torture scenes have to be that graphic? Does it add to the book or take away from it to have the torture depicted like that? I couldnt decide... I just know I didnt enjoy reading that part, and I loved reading all the rest of it.

#2: I think that the problem is that there are several reasons why.

The most obvious is that the writer wants to sell books - add a bit of sex and violence and, the more graphic the better - equals sales. Same in the cinema - you've got to bring the audience in. Nothing like seeing a head blasted apart (opening battle scene: 'Glory') or legs being chopped away (The Patriot). As for Apache torture - the end results can be seen in films like 'Ulzana's Raid' or ' Duel At Diablo'.

On the other side of the coin the white man wasn't known for his love of the Indian either and was, just as equally, capable of commiting attrocities. On the other hand is the argument that all that's being described is, historically, what the Apaches did. After all look at some of the old war books (by Lord Russell of Liverpool) 'Knights of Bushido' and the treatment of P.O.Ws by the Japanese or the companion piece about the Germans in 'Scourge of the Swastika'. These books were around in the '50s while I was at school. And, for their time, were strong meat - to a bunch of impressionable 12 year olds.

The Apaches, like many other tribes, were there long before the white man stepped foot on their soil. They had traditions and customs. Counting coup, taking the spirits (souls) of the dead. A hatred or contempt of the weakness in others. A warrior fights to the end - no surrender - a warrior had honour. Left alone they were a decent bunch of people - had a bath everyday, did their hair, hunted buffalo to feed their people and used the skins for all sorts of things. Tended to stock and farmed. Moved to warmer climes in a nomadic way. In fact, not much differant to us in many ways - but there's always someone who doesn't see it that way and wants to change things.

Having read those two war books that I mentioned above a scene involving the torture of Mexicans by Apaches wouldn't have the impact on me as it would with younger people who know little about the atrocities committed in the Second World War or the Mau Mau uprising - for example.

Violence for violence's sake doesn't impress me - or should I say that it doesn't make an impression on me.

Well, not quite true, for as I wrote that last bit I recalled that one of the most vicious fights I've come across is the one in Wilbur Smith's ' Eagle In The Sky' where there's a one on one between a baboon and a pup. It is so descriptive that it dwarfs the earlier carnage in a bomb blast or the downing of a fighter in flames. But, then, this moment is about animals and not humans.

I suppose it comes down to the individual as to what they want from a Western. Sometimes a good story comes with stuff we really don't want to know about. It's like telling a child to cover their eyes - an invitation to peek.

Doubt if that answers the question.

#3: No Western that I have ever read or watched has ever been as violent as some of what went on. Depictions of indians scalping people or the U.S. Calvalry cutting down indian children with sabres in movies seems VERY graphic (and it is) and some people don't think that it has a place in a Western. But has anyone ever seen a depiction of settlers inviting 25 indians into a cabin for a meal and then locking the door on them and setting the building afire to burn them to death?

Well, local indian agent Ben Wright and a group of men did exactly that to the Modocs and later on, the Tututni and the Takelmas exacted revenge on Ben Wright (his Yurok wife even helped them) by tricking him into an ambush where they proceeded to disembowel him alive and then decorated the tree limbs nearby with his organs. (Except for his heart, which the Takelmas cut out and ate raw, apparently).

The Takelmas, Latgawa and Umpquas also seemed to relish in the practice of digging up the bodies of dead settlers, stripping them nude and then hanging the corpses from trees as a form of psychological warfare. I think the most chilling thing I've ever come across is the story of a local woman who was alone on the night of Oct. 9th, 1858 when the Takelmas swept down out of the hillsides with the intention of killing every white settler in this valley. The woman in question was alone in the cabin that night apart from having her toddler age daughter with her (apparently her husband had already been killed some distance away).

When the Takelmas appeared, she simply bolted the cabin door and retreated to the most secure room of the building. Meeting no resistance, the Takelmas set fire to the cabin and then proceeded to kill all the livestock on the place and set fire to the barn. With the cabin on fire and nowhere to run, the woman dressed herself and her daughter in their Sunday clothes and then proceeded to sit down in a chair and calmly waited to succumb to death in the inferno. (I don't know how true that story is, because I'm not sure how anyone witnessed it, but I do know that there was a woman and a female child definitely killed by fire on that site during the raid and the area is widely known locally for having a very peculiar, sad atmosphere around it at night).

There are probably thousands of other equally (if not more) gruesome stories found in rarer history books all over the West as what I've mentioned (and I could tell a few more that are strictly local as this area has an extremely violent history even when compared to places like Tombstone, Dodge City, etc.). The bottom line is that a lot of REALLY terrible things went on during the settlement period of the Western states and many of them were so bad that even many historians really tend to water them down.

All that said, all of those stories really do need to be told and from a personal standpoint, so I don't necessarily think that depicting cynicism, greed or violence in Westerns is necessarily a negative, though it probably does shatter a lot of rules. As well, I'm not sure that always focusing on the good things was always the intention of writers who's names are quite often attached to the traditional Western.

I do know that in recent years it has come to light that much of Zane Grey's work was edited very heavily for content, even to the point that one of his editors often rewrote some of his novels to the point of confusion in some cases in order to eliminate some of the themes that he was writing about. (Incidentily, Zane Grey is something of a local legend in my neck of the woods as he often came here to write here and had a cabin down river from me that is still standing. He was also apparently a bit overprotective about "his" stretch of the river to the point that he and Clark Gable, who also had a place here, once ran off some tourists with gunfire when they made the mistake of invading their territory. Locally, there have always been rumors about Grey wanting to have written a novel with some of that not so pleasant local history in it, but apparently it either never came to pass or was supressed, though he did write several books set here.)

So from a personal standpoint, what I would like to see are more books and more movies that are simply based in reality. That's why I really have an appreciation for Ernest Haycox, who besides also being from here in Oregon, really tried to write as accurately as he could and is said to have researched quite meticulously on a daily basis and I think he did a better job than Louis L'Amour in this regard, even though I really do like his stuff too.

But, that said, for my taste, they need not be violent for violence sake alone, but I'd like to see some of those less pleasant stories taken and retold for the sake of some realism.

Review of Draw Down the Lightning By Ben Bridges

Among the many westerns under an assortment of aliases that David Whitehead has produced, the Carter O’Brien series holds special appeal as his first novel featured this character way back in 1986. This book is Carter’s latest outing and from the first sentence it doesn’t disappoint.

Carter survived thirteen other adventures because he was greased lightning with a gun and the best freelance fighting man in the business. But now he was keen on having a rest. Unfortunately, trouble has a tendency to find him. He interrupts two men menacing a greenhorn on a buggy. A fight ensues and the two men get away but at least he saves the man, Collins. Oddly, Collins isn’t particularly forthcoming with information. It seems that Collins was purposefully targeted for the hold-up. But why? Collins is working for the Long Branch ranch, which is run by two sisters, Lyn Merrick and widowed Jane Farrow, who also has a son, Clay. They’re helped by old-timer Abel Spark.

The Long Branch is suffering from hoof-and-mouth and times are desperate. Worse, Carter's old enemy, Tom Grandee, has joined up with a gang of gunslingers and is working against them. Carter was told not to interfere and to leave the county. Carter felt disinclined to listen to threats – especially when women are in jeopardy. Inevitably, blood is going to be spilt and lightning will be unleashed.

Description, motivation, characterisation, a sense of place, believable action – they’re here in plenty. You almost smell the gunsmoke and feel the ache of bruises and the loss of a friend. At turns action-packed, humorous, poignant and dramatic, the story never lets go.

Sure, we know the hero must survive, but Carter comes close to oblivion more than once. Our concerns are for the other characters pressed hard by single-minded arrogant villains. Carter is one of the old school, a man who can take a beating yet still stand up, bloodied but unbowed, to fight for what is right.

A story well told by a very accomplished professional. And it’s a great title, too. (Oh, and my wife Jennifer really enjoyed it as well!) - Nik Morton

Self-publishing westerns

It could be argued that there a lot of REALLY BAD books being self-published out there (and there are, believe me), but at the same time, let me just say that a writer who would instantly criticize another writer (or a group of writers) on the grounds of self-publishing clearly does not know much about the publishing industry.

There are a lot of very important books that are or were self published. They are books that are well written and that are quite often much appreciated by people in the publishing. However, not all books are marketable in the eyes of the publishing industry and a lot of very well written and very worthy books are rejected by editors, even if the editor truly likes the book, simply because many books are deemed as risky investments.

This would especially apply to historical non-fiction, in that many books just don't have the marketability to justify the high volume of copies that are required of offset printing. As an example, let's say that I decided I was going to write a book about the Chinese who settled my area in the 1840's and 1850's, most of whom later migrated down to San Francisco due to a surge of gold strikes in Northern California.

Historically, that would be an important book and there isn't anything similar available. It would be important to people in this area who know very little about that and it would also probably be important to the descendents of those immigrants who now live in the Bay Area and know little about their ancestors before they reached Frisco. But, even if that is important, what, where and how big is the market? I can tell you that the market is very limited and that a book like that might sell about 500 copies and that is really the complete extent of it.

(And were it me, having published books like that myself, I would only start with a first printing of 100 copies because obviously you don't want to pay to print books and then get stuck with them.) And here's the reality, even if a book like that really did impress an editor, they are not going to touch it with a barge pole as a publisher because they know that the market does not justify the investment that they would make. When editors (especially younger ones) sign books that don't sell, that means their neck. And they are very much right in that sort of thought. When I was much younger my step father worked as a printer and there is quite a local tradition for writing local interest books. He printed dozens of them, many of which are still very much talked about 20-25 years later. When they had bigger print runs on these books, I used to go help them with coallating and binding, because for one, they needed the help and for two, ten year olds come very cheap even if they are as good as anyone else on hand.

Today, I can walk into our local interest bookstore and not only are there still "brand new" copies of those books on the shelves wrapped in plastic, but they are the SAME books I helped to put together. They look new, but the 1st print run of 500 still has not sold out completely over 20 years later and who knows how many are still stored in boxes somewhere. That's how big that market really is, so yes, they need to be self published.

For that matter, this even applies to fiction too. Not all fiction is marketable. Quite often if you deviate radically from the formula used in a genre, even if the editor appreciates the writer and their work, they won't touch it. And for that matter, it is a FACT that publishers today are not as a rule, interested in short fiction collections or anthologies regardless of who writes them.

As a case in point, about four years ago a small press editor I knew decided that she wanted to put out an anthology of the top horror writers that the UK had to offer. In addition to getting a few rising talents, she also managed to hook EVERY well known British horror writer the UK had to offer into the project, with the exception of Clive Barker, who liked the idea but due to the constraints of his current contract could not give her a story. She also took something of mine, as I was living in the UK at the time (though I'm not sure I was actually worthy of inclusion). Finally she got everything together, completed the editing and when I saw the final edit, I took one look and was immediately impressed and figured she had edited together a winner, especially considering that the "names" she had included had given her the phone numbers of their own editors.

It all seemed to be in the bag. Then a strange thing happened. She started calling those New York editors and they just weren't interested even though their own writers with heavy duty track records were involved. They simply said "We're not doing any anthologies or short story collections these days, no matter who is in them. But hey, since you are a friend of ________ and ________, if you have a novel you're trying to sell, we'll be really happy to take a look at it and maybe work something out on that for you".

In the end, that anthology never was published, despite the fact that a about a half dozen of the included authors routinely sell hundreds of thousands of copies of their novels. And that's the reality. Large publishers no longer publish short story collections or anthologies, unless it happens on an internal level. That leaves people who have short fiction projects (either their own collections or anthologies comprised of multiple authors) in a precarious position. They can either self publish them or they can go out and slog their guts out for a few years trying to find a home for it, only to likely not find one in the end.

I for one would never sacrifice a novel to self publishing, but knowing what I do know about the industry, I would NEVER waste my time trying to find a publisher for a collection or an anthology. The bottom line is that I'm not going to live forever and could get hit by a truck tommorrow, so why not self publish it TODAY opposed to waiting forever to do much of nothing And considering my truly "wonderful" experience with publishers and agents in the past (having watched a mass market publisher utterly "blow it" on one project of mine and having once fired an agent because she never seemed to get anything done for me), to tell you the truth, I trust myself a lot more as a publisher/editor/marketer than I would trust anyone else to do it.

I'd also encourage others to go about things the same way (not selling themselves short on long projects (ie. go get a publisher), but realizing that short projects have a better place to help promote you (ie. do them yourself), but also with the realization that being a bit of a maverick about it is hard work. Books don't sell themselves and getting the word out there to sell a few is the hard part - the writing is easy.

So in otherwords, if someone slags you off for self publishing or promoting self published work, just ignore them and go about doing what you want to do. It's nobody else's business, anyway.

A Trail of Tears by Charles T. Whipple

Christmas Eve, 1989, winter in Dakota. Trees explode in the nighttime cold. The moon lights the snowscape as if it were noon. And the wind sweeps across the Badlands, armed with ice crystals to attack noses and cheeks and patches of bare skin.

A tiny sun burns in the celadon sky, warming the days to 20 below. The craggy Badlands are transformed into gentle swells and hollows by a 10-foot blanket of snow; weary marchers plod over its frozen crust.

The pilgrimage began on the banks of the Cheyenne River four days ago -- Native Americans and their friends reliving the cold and the hunger of Big Foot's band of Miniconjou Sioux on its march toward death at Wounded Knee.

Four days they've struggled over the dazzling desert of snow. Four days they've taken no food and had only frozen crystals of snow for water. No fires. No heat. Just the warmth of human companionship and fusion of the spirit.

One of the pilgrims is Shonosuke Okura, heir to 600 years of Japanese Noh traditions and spirit brother to Dennis Banks, a Native American Movement leader.

"We think alike," explains Okura. "Native American rites use percussion and chants in the same kind of spirituality we experience in Noh. I took the pilgrimage to expand my spiritual horizons.

"On the journey to Wounded Knee we sought to fuse body, mind, and spirit," Okura says. "Native Americans say that only fusion can put you in touch with the primal mind; the Creator; the spirit-that-moves-in-all-things. And it can only be done by overcoming the demons inside yourself -- distraction and self-doubt."

Okura says fusion takes concentration so absolute, so pure, that there is no room for distraction and no possibility of failure. "It comes only when your goal is absolutely clear, and so important to you that you are able to transcend the limitations of your body to come in touch with the spirit of true freedom." For Okura, Christmas Eve brought a inkling of fusion.

"It was bitter cold," he explains, "the fourth day of fasting. But I felt myself rising to a more spiritual plane. The wind drifted darts of snow across the land. I could see cattle here and there, all with tails to the wind and heads held low out of its blasts. We bent into the wind, too. The Native Americans around me started a low chant, its rhythm exactly in time to our beating hearts. Slowly our bodies began to warm. And soon we were walking easily across the snow dunes, buoyed by the chant.

"That night, I slept snug in my sleeping bag . . . actually, it was the first good night's sleep I'd had. My stomach had decided it wasn't going to get fed and stopped growling. My mind was clear and unfettered. I felt that I could see every cell in my body, and I said to it 'farewell and be warm' as I went to sleep. "It was still dark when the leaders woke us. A bonfire lit the snowscape. I tried to sit up in my warm bag, but it was frozen to the snow. So I donned my down trousers and coat inside the bag, and crawled out, fully refreshed. That morning, we drank hot broth, breaking our fast."

Three days later the pilgrim band stood on the bluff overlooking Wounded Knee Creek. There, in a bend of the stream, Big Foot and 350 Miniconjou Sioux, 250 of them women and children, camped on December 28, 1889 -- 100 years ago to the day. The pilgrims made their way to Big Foot's campgrounds for the night.

As the sun lightened the sky in the predawn, drums began to throb. Chants filled the air, reminiscent of a century past. When the sun was up, the storyteller stood and told of a band of Miniconjou Sioux, headed for the Pine River Indian Agency as the agent had ordered. He told of the 500 soldiers who surrounded them, of Hotchkiss guns on the bluff.

The Indians were told to lay down their arms, which they were loath to do. The soldiers came closer. One tried to wrench a rifle from a deaf man. It went off, and the melee began. Soldiers and Indians shot, stabbed, and clubbed each other in hand-to-hand fighting. Big Foot and most of his chiefs fell to the soldiers of rifle fire. Then the soldiers fell back to let the 1.5-inch Hotchkiss guns pour 50 rounds a minute into the fleeing Indians.

Carnage reigned. At least 150 of Big Foot's band died, mostly women and children; some 50 were wounded. The soldiers lost only 25, with 39 wounded. "We have come," the storyteller proclaimed, lifting his arms toward the heaven.

"We have come." He surveyed the pilgrims who stood in a circle around him, hands clasped in fellowship. He spoke once more, echoing Dee Brown's words. "We have come . . . over a trail of tears . . . to bury our hearts at Wounded Knee."

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