Mark Warren's Blog: Mark Warren Blog - Posts Tagged "wild-west"

By the time I was nine years old, my collections of magazine and newspaper articles about Wyatt Earp had grown to 3 boxes. My bookshelves had become a beginner’s library of the Old West. Books now outnumbered comic books.

I never stopped to ask myself why I was so passionate about this research, but that passion for history only escalated. It became obvious to those around me, and that was an asset. People began to supply me with articles they had run across. Everyone knew that I was the “Wyatt Earp kid.” Most adults thought it the typical infatuation with a TV idol, but my closest friends knew better. They understood that this was something deeper.

One particular exchange between my mother and me became a repeatable regular. She would see me busy at work, which usually involved me sitting at my desk making pen and ink drawings for my ambitious anthology of illustrations depicting every notable event in the life of Wyatt Earp.

My mother would smile and watch me for a time before saying, “You were just born in the wrong time, weren’t you, Mark?”

Without hesitation I always answered, “Yes, ma’am.”

At that time I never realized that such a scenario would have meant I’d never have met this good woman. But she never felt hurt by my answer. She got it.

By the way, those drawings (a stack of papers the size of an unabridged dictionary) they were rendered on the oldest yellowed paper I could find. Rough-textured stuff without a hint of smoothness. My drawing implement was an old-fashioned dipping pen with a split nib that I lowered carefully into a well of India ink. I deemed this to be authentic. So crude was the process that, physically, it felt like trying to move the point of a straight pin across the surface of a carpet. Hundreds and hundreds of tortured scratchings. A passion. All these illustrations … all my boxes of papers … my entire library … decades down the road it would all go up in flames in a house fire.

In the winter of my 13th year, when most of my friends were discovering sports, girls, and the not too distant dream of owning a car, they must have been a little confused about my birthday party. For the occasion I invited 7 males with instructions to bring cap guns and holsters. I handed out scripts and coached them in a reenactment of the Gunfight Behind the O.K. Corral, informing each of his assigned shots, wounds, or death scene. It was easily the high point of my year. And as I look back on it from seventy, that unique birthday may have been my best.
Adobe Moon

For the first two-thirds of my 60+ years of research into the life of Wyatt Earp, I made an assumption about his personality that I now consider to be inaccurate. Based upon the accounts of his actions in crisis moments, it was easy to assign to Mr. Earp the word “courageous.” In fact, this was the very character trait that reached out to me as a child and hooked me for life. All through my youth, courage fascinated me. It still does.

Once I had read my first book about Wyatt Earp, I looked for another. Eventually I discovered library files, micro-films of old newspapers, and stacks of dusty magazines. Later I sought out interviews with historians. And so it went.

Though different researchers and authors have, over the 90 years since Wyatt died, depicted him as either a stalwart frontier lawman or as a sly opportunist who often blurred the lines of ethics, no one has convincingly challenged his grit. He was a very deliberate man. His quiet strength and determined approach to problems earned him either loyal allies or desperate enemies with little else remaining in between. As a young boy it was easy for me to catalogue Wyatt’s man-of-action qualities under the mantle of “courage,” but now I believe it was something else.

Bat Masterson and Jimmy Cairns—both Kansas lawmen who worked with Wyatt—had named it long ago, when they remarked that Wyatt operated as an officer of the law with an “utter lack of fear.” Wyatt took a straight-ahead approach to problems. Once he knew what he needed to do, little could stop him. Entering into a confrontation without fear . . . and entering such a scenario with courage . . . are two very different things.

To exercise courage one must overcome fear. To be fearless is just that—without fear. In this latter case there is nothing to overcome. Though the two approaches might appear identical to an observer, they are not.

One end result of conquering fear is a boost to self-esteem. A person who bravely surmounts his anxieties earns a certain validation of his ideal character. He lives up to his own code of behavior, even when consequences loom. I suspect that Wyatt Earp did not experience such revelatory surges of pride. Perhaps his pride was a permanent fixture that resulted from his fearlessness. Perhaps it served as a driving momentum for his “straight-ahead” personality.

We don’t often meet fearless individuals. They are uncommon. To complicate the issue, some people are fearless at certain points in their lives but at other times they feel the vulnerability of being afraid. If ever you ask someone “Have you never felt fear?” and he/she truthfully answers “Never” . . . you are talking to a rare human being. A conversation with such a person might prove educational. Perhaps that person’s personality might share some common ground with Wyatt Earp’s demeanor.

How does a person acquire such an unusual trait as fearlessness? Certainly some of it is the result of genetics. Wyatt’s father, Nicholas, was domineering, blustery, bossy, and intolerant of dissension. Another way to look at those qualities is to call the man “extremely confident” about his opinions. While Nicholas was noisy and bombastic about his beliefs, Wyatt was quiet, a man of few words. All of this begs a few questions: 1.) Did Wyatt acquire his confidence from his father’s DNA? 2.) Did the clannishness of the Earps promote feelings of superiority over others? 3.) Did Wyatt develop an internal confidence as a way to survive his father’s rule?

I believe the answers to all the above should be woven together and considered. But a definitive answer is more complicated than choosing one reasonable answer. It must have been quite a lesson as a youngster for Wyatt to see the way that Nicholas treated other people in order to get what Nick wanted, because, even though the elder Earp lacked tact, he generally came out on top.

Life on an Iowa farm among five brothers undoubtedly spawned a sense of solidarity for the Earp boys. Together they solved whatever problems arose in agrarian life. Plus, each brother knew that his kin would back him up against outsiders. The Earp boys would have experienced the typical competitions between brothers, but overshadowing any inner turmoil in the family was the need to show a common front against a Dutch-dominated community.

We can surmise and theorize over such matters of the psyche and never know the absolute truth. But, for my two cents, I believe that genetics weighs in heavily in this equation. It appears that Nicholas’s domineering character passed to Wyatt as an Earp legacy, but Wyatt carried it with reserve and containment. To illustrate my point, I imagine someone asking Nicholas about an altercation he had on the street with a political rival. The elder Earp would have delivered a blow by blow accounting of the affair, giving himself the better of it, no doubt. On the other hand, whenever Wyatt was asked about the famous gunfight in Tombstone (the one the world would call “the O.K. Corral fight”), his reply was always to say: “I suppose we can find something better than that to talk about.”

To compare photographs of Nicholas and Wyatt, one sees the same glowering eyes . . . more so with Wyatt than for any other Earp brother. Each time these two men faced a camera, they looked as if they were “staring a man down.” Even into his old age, Wyatt “called out” the camera with his all-business eyes. I know of only one photograph that shows him smiling, and each time I show it to someone I get the same question: “How can you tell he’s smiling?” People ask this because Wyatt’s head is tilted down, making it difficult to see his mouth below his moustache. His eyes are looking down at his dog, and so the observer sees only Wyatt’s eyelids. But I know he’s smiling. It shows in the subtle shadows of his face.

Unlike today’s spate of cell phone selfies and snap shots, photographic images of people from the 19th century West almost never show a smile. That might tell us something about the hardships of making a life on the frontier in the 1800’s. Or perhaps about the pride of surviving it. Still it’s interesting to study the old images, to see what a person chose to wear for the occasion of a photograph. Or to see what prop the poser borrowed from the photographer’s supply of studio accoutrements.” Many young men in these centuries-old images, for example, clutched rifles and stuffed revolvers and knives in waistbands, belts, and boot tops until they bristled with artillery. Such a tintype would be carried home to show friends how one decks out for a life of adventure. Their portraits seem to say: “If you’ve got the sand to follow my footsteps (to ‘see the elephant’) you’d better be prepared for anything . . . just like I am.” All that Colt, Remington, Winchester, and Smith & Wesson hardware in a photo might be likened to a varsity letter on a school jacket in my high school days.

To my knowledge, Wyatt never brandished a pistol in a photo. He probably never felt the need.

Personally, I have known fear. But I’ve also known courage . . . its costs . . . and the benefits that come from employing it. So, doesn’t that mean that I, as an author, should not know how to write about someone who is fearless . . . someone like Wyatt Earp? What, you might ask, gives me the author-ity to describe Earp’s feelings, motives, and mindset?

For half a century I couldn’t do it. I could detail what he did, where and when he did it, and with whom, but not always the “whys” and “hows.” But here’s what I have learned. As all of us get older, we come closer to a kind of fearlessness. Not in dare-devil feats. I’m talking about a quieter demeanor in facing the challenges that come our way. We gain a larger perspective about what is important and what is not, and this view can sometimes dwarf threats from menacing to laughable. This territory of fearlessness grows with every year. This is why I waited 60 years to write about a fearless man. It took me that long to understand what made Wyatt Earp tick.

In the long haul, Wyatt’s fearlessness served him well in his years wearing a badge but did little to further him toward his ambitions. This is why I have evoked the Mexican adage of the “adobe moon” in my first book of his story. It’s a moon the color of mud, reminding one who gazes at it and dreams of his future that, inevitably, he must eventually settle for what he has . . . like a home made of mud.

If you enjoyed Adobe Moon, the first book in the trilogy Wyatt Earp, An American Odyssey, the second book debuts November 21. This one is called Born to the Badge and covers the Kansas years, 1874 – 1879. This is the period in which Wyatt’s formative years in lawing turn professional, and the reader watches Earp unknowingly prepare for the trials of Arizona Territory that await him. The final book covering the Tombstone years is called Promised Land and comes out in September of 2019.

Here are a few remarks about Born to the Badge by several renowned researchers:

“Mark Warren is the first writer to illuminate the Earp story from the inside. Adobe Moon and Born to the Badge show you why Wyatt Earp became a legend and what that legend was born out of.” ~ Allen Barra, author of Inventing Wyatt Earp, his Life and Many Legends

“They still talk about Wyatt Earp in Wichita and Dodge City. After reading Mark Warren’s Born to the Badge, you’ll understand why.” ~ Jeff Morey, historical consultant for the movie Tombstone

“Warren’s intensive research uncovers layers beyond the legend as Wyatt Earp follows the sun westward in pursuit of another opportunity. Accurate discourse unites with historical truth to produce a thrilling read that is really tough to put down.” ~ Eddie Lanham, historical researcher

“Historian Mark Warren’s second volume in his trilogy on the life and times of Wyatt Earp (presents) dialogue that is virtually true to life and gives the feeling the author must have been present when the words were originally spoken. This volume has been anticipated and meets all expectations.” ~ Roy B. Young, Wild West History Association

The Long Road to LegendMost of the aficionados of Western history whom I have met, kick-started their passions for all things Western by watching television in the 1950s and 60s. There is no doubt that the “Era of the TV Western” had a profound influence on all of us who grew up in those decades. Around half a dozen Western series aired each night. Overall, about 140 Westerns debuted on the small screen in those 20 years.

Movie makers followed suit. The terms “Saturday matinee” and “Western” went hand in hand. It’s hard for modern youth to understand how that flood of Western entertainment inundated us, taught us about character, and helped to shape who we are now. The Western was then what the world of mystical fantasy is now to our present culture’s youth.

It seems that a milestone in the transition was Star Wars, which, interestingly, was considered by many to be a “Western in space.” Then followed everything else that sealed the genre of magic and mystery: Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, all the super-heroes (Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Wonder Woman, etc.) That’s a very glittery world for the Western to compete with. It’s like trying to pull a child’s attention away from a computer game to show him/her the grandeur of a spider web or a century-old oak.

One thing that must be said for our TV Western-influenced years is that the information was, at least loosely, based upon history. It was connected to something real in our American past. Maybe Matt Dillon was not a historical character, but his demeanor and interactions with the townfolk of 1870’s Dodge City taught us something about the people who inhabited that time and place. The same cannot be said for Lord of the Rings and Spiderman. As impressive as movies like this are, we’re not connected to them by the roots of our past.

The big glitch for us came when we discovered that Hollywood had delivered up its own version of the West. We thought we knew Wyatt Earp, Jim Bowie, and Davy Crockett, but we were given a sanitized version of these real life characters for the sake of providing heroes whom we could emulate.

Those of us who pursued more about our American frontier history (beyond the small- and big-screen) soon found out that we had been duped. There was no “code of the West” that insisted a lawman allow the outlaw to draw his gun first. In fact, there were hardly ever face-downs on the street in which two antagonists met with guns holstered. (That’s one of the reasons the OK Corral fight is so celebrated.)

The struggle between Indians and white men was more than a story of a supreme trespass. Though founded upon the specious rationalizations of Manifest Destiny, it became much more complicated and gruesome on both sides. But that’s not how it was presented to us through film.

All of this is to say that, for most of us, our love of the West was born out of fiction. It was the writers who started the trend of exaggeration: Walter Noble Burns, Stuart Lake, Frank Wilstach, Ash Upson, etc. Most of us probably agree that the true history of Western heroes is far more interesting than the fiction that was introduced to us. And so, many of us feel a natural resentment toward the mythmakers and swear off anything that smells of fiction.

But I am here to tell you that fiction has a place in telling the truth. If you visit a Western museum and admire the renditions of paintings of the great Western artists (think: Edgar Paxson’s Custer’s Last Fight), you might feel your love for this history enhanced by the visual brush strokes. But you’re looking at a fiction. The scene was made up or interpreted by an artist. It’s not a photograph.

If you enjoy paging through a colorful book by artist Bob Boze Bell—on Earp, Holliday, Bonney, Hickok, or Geronimo—you’re getting a good historical timeline, wonderful paintings and sketches, and a heavy dose of facts, but you’re still looking at a fictional image. As much as Mr. Bell might adhere to the best-known data, he delivers up a visual interpretation using artistic creativity. For example, we don’t know for certain how the participants were posed at any given moment in the streetfight behind the OK Corral in Tombstone. (We don’t even know with certainty how “the ball opened.”) You’re seeing Mr. Bell’s version of it. We may know that Tom McLaury’s blouse was blue and Doc Holliday’s overcoat gray, but what about Ike Clanton’s boots and Morgan Earp’s hat? As dedicated as Mr. Bell is to history, his creative juices flow to fill in the gaps, so that you can enjoy seeing the dramatic moment. And O how we love to see those drawings and paintings rendered. We pore over them as if looking through a time machine.

This is exactly what a writer of historical fiction supplies. With his/her palette of words, the writer fills in the picture, creating colors, sounds, tastes, and smells. Such a writer allows the reader to feel the sun on the protagonist’s back. To sense danger. To feel relaxed, angry, or afraid. If the author has devoted enough time to the research, he/she begins to absorb the psychology of the characters and can make an admirable stab at exposing the inner thoughts of the real people who fascinate us a century and a half later.

Reading a stellar historical novel introduces emotion to the story. In fact, I believe that it’s similar to adding a musical score to a motion picture. Pull out your favorite DVD and watch a pivotal scene with the volume muted. Then go back and watch again with its accompanying score. (Writing music and writing a novel have more in common than you might think.) The emotion evoked by this added device (music) gets you more involved in the story. It gets you invested. Puts you in a mood. It helps you appreciate more the history that you thought you already knew.

Granted, there are some writers who don’t do adequate research; therefore, they churn out books of questionable value. How do we cull them out? Word of mouth among WWHA members is one way. For another, look into the author’s background and research. It can reveal a lot. Where did they get their material? Whose research are they relying on? We who crave the “truth” about history—or at least the current culture’s take on it—are familiar with the present-day leaders of research. (A list of their names would read like a speakers’ agenda at a WWHA seminar.)

Here are two suggestions for good reads. Try The Frontiersman by Allan Eckert. Enjoy that one and watch your interest level in the 18 – 19 century Ohio River Valley begin to emerge. Find a copy of Hanta Yo by Ruth Hill. It could change forever the way you think about the Dakotah and other plains tribes.

I wonder if other WWHA members would be willing to share the titles of historical novels that have meant a lot to them. This would be a good introductory reading list for you if you would like to see how this genre can enhance your understanding of history.

(This blog post originally appeared as a guest blog on the WWHA website. To find out more about the Wild West History Association, or to join, check out their website at https://wildwesthistory.org.)