Literature of the Wild West: Louis L'Amour

"I think of myself in the oral tradition--as a troubadour, a village tale-teller, the man in the shadows of the campfire. That's the way I'd like to be remembered--as a storyteller. A good storyteller." --Louis L'Amour

I have just returned from a long vacation in Colorado. I am a big fan of books on CD, and since all of my traveling is done in the American Southwest, I prefer to listen to books about the Southwest, and authors such as Zane Grey, Willa Cather, and my favorite, Louis L'Amour.

My adoration of L'Amour's writing style began when I was a child. My father used to tell me, "if you want to know what it was really like to live in the Wild West, you should read Louis L'Amour." My father is a Wild West bookworm, and he has also read most of Louis L'Amour's books. His educated opinion is that L'Amour knew his subject well and I also believe this to be true, particularly when I read L'Amour's descriptions of Texas, New Mexico and Colorado.

I am currently living in the area of New Mexico that L'Amour wrote about in The Daybreakers. When I read his descriptions of the Sandia Mountains and the watermelon appearance they take on at sunset, of the vast fields of green during monsoon season and the herds of antelope racing across the prairie, of dust storms rising out of nowhere, reaching past the clouds into the heavens, I find myself saying, "Yes, I understand!"

Louis L'Amour actually lived the western life he loved so well and wrote of in his books, though he was born in 1908, in a time when what remained of the true American Old West was generally found in traveling shows, reenacted by paid--though highly skilled--performers, such as Annie Oakley.

L'Amour was born Louis Dearborn LaMoore in Jamestown, North Dakota, the seventh child of Dr. Louis Charles LaMoore, a veterinarian, and his wife, Emily Dearborn. L'Amour's father was French and his mother was Irish. L'Amour could trace his ancestry in North America back to the early 1600s. The family moved to the Dakotas in 1882 when the Jamestown area was mostly farmland and LaMoore's large animal clinic was well-supported by the cattle and horses belonging to the local cowboys.

When he wasn't playing cowboys and Indians in his father's barn with his youngest sibling, Louis was reading. He was tutored by his educated and successful older brothers and sisters. Hard as they might try to keep him focused on his studies, though, his attention often strayed to adventure novels, a problem that would eventually pay off in a successful writing career. Louis was an avid reader of his favorite author, G.A. Henty, who wrote novels popular with young boys.

In the winter of 1923, when the economy in North Dakota took a heavy fall, the family moved to the Southwest. The boys and their father worked skinning cattle in west Texas and baling hay in New Mexico. I suspect they spent some time in the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico, judging from the detailed descriptions in L'Amour's novels.

When he was 15, L'Amour set off alone to start his adventurous life, working a wide variety of jobs, including time as a seaman, lumberjack, and miner. He also served in the Transportation Corp during World War II. He was shipwrecked in the West Indies and stranded in the Mojave Desert, but he somehow managed to survive. His grit and determination served him well in his next career as a pugilist--he won 51 of 59 fights as a professional boxer.

Between adventures, L'Amour also worked as a journalist and lecturer. His massive collection of vintage novels numbered close to 17,000. He used the knowledge he derived from these books, his varied experiences, and his extensive knowledge of the West to create one of the finest bodies of written work produced by an American author, with 89 novels, 250 short stories, and even poetry. He even dabbled in acting, appearing in the 1979 two-part television series of The Sacketts.

My favorite is the Sacket series, and my favorite book is The Day Breakers with its detailed descriptions of New Mexico. The book is narrated by Tyrel Sackett, a fast-shooter with a kind heart dedicated to making the world a better place for his family. The book has everything readers want from Westerns--mystery, suspense, romance, and more than one barroom shootout--but it also has sections of great humor that come to the reader unexpectedly as wonderful, laugh-out-loud moments. At one point, when he is visiting Santa Fe with his brother, Tyrel decides to take a bath. He finds a long bathing room with many tubs, disrobes, soaps up, then stares in shock as a group of young women enter the room with laundry baskets on their heads. Yep, you guessed it--he was bathing in the local Old West laundromat!

In his lifetime, L'Amour received numerous prestigious writing awards. In 1983 he became the first novelist awarded the Congressional Gold Medal by the US Congress for his life's work and in 1984 he was awarded the Medal of Freedom by US President Ronald Reagan.

Louis L'Amour died on June 10, 1988 and his wife, Kathy, and children, Beau and Angelique, carried on his publishing tradition. His books have now been translated into 20 languages and more 320 million copies have sold worldwide. Every written work by Louis L'Amour is still in print, which I believe is a testament to the undying popularity of the Western novel and our undying love for the American West.

The Center for Western and Cowboy Poetry, Cowboy Poetry.com, Cowboy Art

A post for those interested in contemporary cowboys: If you are not connected to these two pages I would highly recommend that you check them out--very entertaining.

A Facebook Post from the Center for Western and Cowboy Poetry Cowboy Poetry.com

All day I've faced a barren waste
without the taste of water, cool water.
Old Dan and I with throats burnt dry
and souls that cry for water,
cool, water.
..."Cool Water," by Bob Nolan, Sons of the Pioneers

Bob Nolan and the Sons of the Pioneers sing "Cool Water" here.

Hank Williams sings "Cool Water" in this YouTube video, which includes a vintage photo slideshow.

Or one of my favorites, Johnny Cash singing "Ghost Riders in the Sky."

"Straight from the Well," by renowned Cowboy Artists of America President Tim Cox (Tim Cox Fine Art) says it all about "cool water," according to Cowboy Poetry,com, which recently posted: "The impressive painting was a part of the 2012 Prix de West at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum." Cox's painting, "At His Own Pace," was selected as the 2007 Cowboy Poetry Week poster image. You can find more about Tim Cox at CowboyPoetry.com: http://www.cowboypoetry.com/timcox.htm Or, you can go directly to his website at: http://www.timcox.com/ or you can visit his Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/Tim.Cox.Cowboy.Art.

To the right, you will find a sketch by renowned Western artist Frederic Remington. For more information on the art of Frederic Remington visit the Frederic Remington Art Museum Website.

(I am currently on vacation in Colorado again preparing for a series of posts on cowboys!)

Aspen and Ashcroft, Colorado--Old West Mining Towns

Mining in the Old West was a profitable business. It was also a risky, heartbreaking business. In fact, according to The History Channel's The Real West "Boom Town to Ghost Towns," over 90% of Western mining enterprises failed, and the remains of these failed enterprises can still be seen on the mountainsides and along the winding rivers in the deep valleys of Colorado's Rocky Mountains.

In most Western ghost towns only a few structures have survived, and for those unfamiliar with the Old West the contemporary appearance of these ghost towns may give the mistaken impression that the visitor is standing on ground once occupied by a small number of people, when in truth, as soon as the word "gold" was mentioned a thriving metropolis seemed to appear overnight. The average boom town quadrupled its population within a month's time, then quadrupled that expanded number the next month. The "rush" to gold was an important part of the potential success of the miners. The first miners who arrived could pluck nuggets off the ground, but those who arrived late might hit the town in time to see a line of wagons rolling down the road, headed for the next town where someone once again shouted the word "gold."

The words "boom town" meant "profit" to many people. Miners rushed madly to the area where gold or silver was found and they were often unprepared to feed or shelter themselves, or perform the tasks needed to find the gold! This created opportunities for others who followed close behind with wagons full of shovels, tents, clothing, liquor, newspaper printing equipment--the supplies necessary to sustain a town filled with people.

Women arrived behind the miners, often providing some form of service. Mining towns attracted the best entertainers, and men literally threw nuggets of gold on the stage for these young, attractive women. The miners also had a healthy appetite after digging in the mines or panning in the rivers all day and women brought wagon loads of cooking supplies along with their cooking expertise to meet this need. Wagons filled with women also arrived to offer prostitution services.

These early mining towns often had fun, playful names, such as Rough and Ready, Hell's Delight, and Gauge Eye. Sometimes the names of these towns changed a few times before the townsfolk settled on one they liked. For instance, the mining town that started as Ute City, Colorado became Aspen, and the nearby Castle Forks City was soon changed to Chloride, and finally, Ashcroft.

Although one might wonder about the origins of some of these odd-sounding names, such as Gauge Eye, the naming of Ute City did have a logical explanation. In the winter of 1879 the local miners refused to abandon their camps and mining claims in spite of a dangerous Ute uprising nearby and pleas from Colorado's governor of the time, Frederick Pitkin, who urged the miners to return across the Continental Divide to safer grounds.

The town was renamed Aspen in 1880, which is also an appropriate name as the town is filled with quaking aspen trees, and when visitors first view these wonders of nature, it is easy to understand why the miners were reluctant to leave. In addition to the great wealth coming from the mines in this area, the men were surrounded by a natural beauty that still leaves tourists in awe. In fact, the nearby Maroon Bells, southwest of the town of Aspen, is believed to be one of the most photographed mountains in North America due to its magnificent display of colorful aspen leaves in the fall.

As for the money coming from Aspen's mines, at its peak, from 1891 to 1892, Aspen surpassed the famous town of Leadville for silver production. The value of silver exploded with the passage of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890, which doubled the government's purchase of silver. By 1893, Aspen was more than a boom town, it was a bona fide city with numerous banks, a state-of-the-art hospital, theaters, opera houses, and electric lights!

The silver market crashed in 1893 when President Cleveland repealed the act. When the Panic of 1893 hit Aspen, the town crumbled. Within days, most of the mines were closed and the miners were unemployed, broke, and homeless. They had no choice, they had to leave. Within months, the population of Aspen dropped to 705 residents. Aspen seemed to be moving toward ghost town status until the 1930s when investors recognized its value as a ski resort. It is now one of the most popular tourist towns in Colorado, particularly to wealthy vacationers, due to its thriving ski industry, though it still only has a resident population of 6700.

Unfortunately, the nearby mining town of Ashcroft did not fare as well as Aspen, though it started out surprisingly strong. Silver was first discovered in the area in 1879 by wandering miners Charles B. Culver and W.F. Coxhead who had left the town of Leadville, which was nearly over-run with miners by this time, in search of a new silver supply in the Castle Creek Valley. By 1880, Colorado was actually the number one mining state in the country due to the mining production in Leadville, but there were so many men and women moving into the area that those who arrived late on the scene had little hope of success.

When Culver and Coxhead decided to try their luck in Castle Creek Valley, the gamble paid off. In fact, their initial claim produced 14,000 ounces of silver to the ton. Coxhead returned to Leadville to announce their success. When he returned he discovered that 23 men had already joined Culver and were busy establishing their claims. These early miners were surprisingly organized. Within weeks they had formed a Miners Protective Association, establishing a benefit fund for sick and injured miners and their families, collecting dues from what had grown to 97 miners within a matter of weeks. They built a courthouse and platted the streets for their town.

In 1882, a rich strike was announced in the Montezuma and Tam O'Shanter mines and the town was renamed Ashcroft, though my research did not uncover why this particular name was chosen. By this time, Ashcroft had a population of 2000. It also had two newspapers, which were considered vital to the success of Old West towns, six motels, 17 saloons with top-notch entertainment, a brothel, a doctor, a jail, and...a bowling alley! The town was graced with a visit from Horace and Baby Doe Tabor. Horace Tabor was famous for establishing the town of Leadville. The town of Ashcroft decided to honor Tabor's generosity to miners because he often grubstaked miners who did not have the money to stake their own claim, so the people of Ashcroft held an extravagant dinner and dance during the Tabor's visit.

In spite of its popularity and initial success, the town of Ashcroft eventually dwindled to a few hundred people. When it was discovered that the silver vein was shallow, the miners began to drift over to nearby Aspen. Within a few years, over 1900 of Ashcroft's residents had moved to Aspen. The remaining residents spent most of their time relaxing in the saloons or fishing in the nearby streams. However, like Aspen, Ashcroft was also given a second chance around the turn of the century. According to a 2010 article in National Geographic, "Volunteering in the Ghost Town," a World War II veteran, Stuart Mace, moved his family to what remained of Ashcroft in the early 1900s and offered dogsled tours of the ghost town and became the model for the 1950s television series Sergeant Preston of the Yukon. Unfortunately, the dogsled tours were not enough to sustain the town and Ashcroft became yet another Colorado ghost town.

Those few buildings that remain in Ashcroft are in surprisingly good shape as they were recently restored to attract tourism. The town still has ten restored buildings and three buildings that remain in their original condition and are open to tourists for a small fee. One of these buildings contains Mace's dogsled. Although there are no reports of lost souls wandering the streets of Ashcroft, one can still sense the ghost of a dream in the buildings that still stand in what was once a booming town in the Colorado Rockies.

The Outrageous, Notorious, Mysterious Life of Calamity Jane

In 1953, Warner Bros. Studios released the musical extravaganza Calamity Jane starring Doris Day as the boisterous, boastful, gun-toting Calamity and Howard Keel as Wild Bill Hickok, her not-so-secret crush. It is a fun movie with plenty of dancing and romance, but the only part of the film that remotely resembles the life of Calamity Jane is her habit of firing guns in bars, which at one time was welcome behavior in Wild West towns as Calamity's true, wild personality was known to attract large crowds to small town saloons.

From the day she was born, Calamity Jane was different from other women of the time. She had a special kind of energy that attracted friendships with men, but discouraged the same with women. Unfortunately, her wild social behavior eventually was her downfall. Like many of the notorious wild men of the West, Calamity spent her last days suffering terribly from years of hard drinking and heavy smoking.

There is so much about the life of Calamity Jane that remains a mystery. Biographer James D. Horan detailed the life of Calamity Jane in a collection of essays titled Heroic & Outrageous Women where he referred to her as "the most notorious woman in American frontier history. According to Horan, Calamity Jane was born Martha Jane Canary, or Cannary, or Canarray, on May 1, 1852. In addition to the spelling of her name, her birth date and birthplace are also debated. Anyone who has tried to trace their family's genealogy will know immediately the source of this confusion--census records at that time were handwritten, often with very bad handwriting, and census takers did not always ask for the spelling of a name.

In her autobiography, titled Life and Adventures of Calamity Jane, she begins her life story by stating, "My maiden name was Marthy Cannary. I was born in Princeton, Missourri, May 1st, 1852. Father and mother were natives of Ohio. I had two brothers and three sisters, I being the oldest of the children." She also describes her childhood fondness for horses and her keen ability to aim and shoot a gun. Although her talents with both horses and guns are well-documented, it is doubtful that Calamity Jane actually wrote these words as it is well known that Calamity Jane could not read or write.

There are few documented details about the early years of Calamity Jane, though it is known that she started her life, and ended her life, as a drifter. It is also known that one of her first employers was the Union Pacific Railroad. She must have been very young when she worked for the railroad as this was prior to her 1869 arrival in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Cheyenne was a bustling metropolis in the Wild West, the home of many wealthy men and women, and Calamity made quite an impact on the town as she was already wearing men's pants, chewing tobacco, spitting like a mule and drinking in the local saloons. She was, however, welcomed in bars as her wild antics--shooting mirrors, shouting and bragging--attracted customers. Over the next few years she is known to have lived in many Western towns, and worked many jobs. Some say she was attractive when she was younger, a dark-eyed beauty. Others say that it was fitting that she dressed like a man as she looked like one, too. This is not, however, how her fans wished to see her, then or now. For instance, in the 1936 film The Plainsman, Calamity Jane is played by the great Hollywood beauty Jean Arthur, and Wild Bill Hickok is played by Gary Cooper whose character clearly finds her attractive in the film, but has great difficulty expressing his feelings for her. Again, the stories told about Calamity Jane are as varied as the stories she told about herself.

Around 1873 it is believed that Calamity left Cheyenne to work as a mule skinner, a slang term for one who drives mules, but it is also possible she went to work on a cattle drive. She was then spotted in Abilene and later in Hays City, Kansas before making her way up to Montana. In Montana she made friends with Dr. W. A. Allen who years later commented on her dress and behavior, which was considered shocking and outrageous for the times. "She swore, she drank, she wore men's clothing. Where can you find a woman today who doesn't do such things? She was just fifty years ahead of her time," Allen said.

In her autobiography, Calamity claims to have been a scout for General Custer at Fort Russell, Wyoming in 1870, which is unlikely. However, she also says this was the first time she started wearing men's clothing, so it's possible she was able to blend in with the rest of the men. She claims to have been one of the best shots and the most reckless and daring horseback riders of her time, which seems to be a reasonable claim, as well. She bragged in her autobiography--and in many Western saloons--that she once saved the life of a fellow soldier under highly questionable circumstances. She said that she was with a group of soldiers trying to escape from marauding Indians. She was riding in front when she heard a shot, turned, and saw a man named Captain Egan slumped in his saddle. She rode back to Egan and caught him as he fell from his horse, then carried him back to the fort. Captain Egan, she says, is the one who named her Calamity Jane. It is this story that raises the most questions, and eyebrows, regarding the veracity of Calamity Jane's autobiography. How could she possibly have had the strength to catch a falling man in her arms while controlling both her horse and his? (In the Doris Day film, Wild Bill Hickok teases Calamity Jane about this story.)

Calamity also claims to have worked as a Pony Express rider, carrying mail from Deadwood for fifty miles through the Black Hills of South Dakota. It was a dangerous route, but Calamity explains that she experienced little trouble due to her reputation for her quick shot and careful aim--no one wanted to mess with her! She spent the rest of that summer hanging out with her friends Wild Bill Hickok and Charlie Utter. It is also known that she spent a short time working at the brothel of local Black Hills madam Dora DuFran during this time, as well.

Unfortunately, on August 2, 1876, Wild Bill Hickok was shot and killed by Broken Nose Jack McCall during a poker game at Nuttal & Mann's Saloon No. 10 in Deadwood. (Oddly, when he died, Hickok was holding a Dead Man's hand of two black aces and two black eights. A few days before his death, Hickok told friends that he had a premonition he would die that night.) In her autobiography, Calamity claims she heard of Bill's death and ran from her room without her weapons. She tracked McCall to Shurdy's Butcher Shop and threatened him with a meat cleaver until other men arrived to lock him up in a log cabin. Calamity claims McCall escaped from the cabin and was later caught in Yankton and hung. Historians, however, state that McCall was tried and acquitted for Hickok's murder, then arrested a second time in Yankton when he bragged about the murder, retried, and hung for the murder.

It is clear that Calamity Jane tries hard to make herself out to be the hero in every tall tale in her short book, but this type of writing was expected from dime novels about the Wild West. If her book was published in contemporary times she might face a few lawsuits for libel and find herself chased off the Oprah show, but at the time it was published, in the late 1800s, her readers accepted her stories as truth. In the eyes of her readers, in the minds of her fans, Calamity Jane was a Wild West hero.

Following Hickok's death, however, there are also a few well-documented instances of Calamity Jane's true heroism. For instance, she did rescue passengers in an overland stagecoach that was attacked by Plains Indians. She distracted the Indians then took over the reins of the stagecoach--the driver was killed during the attack--and delivered the passengers safely to Deadwood. She also served as a health worker during a smallpox epidemic in Deadwood in 1876 and showed great compassion toward the men she nursed back to health. She also worked desperately to save the life of a young man, C.H. Robinson, who would later appear again in the story of Calamity Jane.

Sadly, according to historian James D. Horan, Calamity spent many years moving from saloon to saloon, drowning her sorrows in massive quantities of alcohol. She eventually made her way back to Wyoming where she worked on a cattle ranch, then down to El Paso where she claims in her autobiography that she met and married Clinton Burk (Burke) in 1885. (A Montana newspaper, the New Northwest, also challenged this story, claiming she had been married twice--once to a man named Washburne and a second time to Lt. Summers, who was the father of her child. Others claim she was married three times, and Calamity told many of her friends that Wild Bill Hickok was the father of her child. Some believed they were secretly married. The mysteries about the life of Calamity Jane are truly endless.)

According to Calamity, she gave birth to a daughter on October 28,l 1887. She says that she and her husband moved to Boulder, Colorado and managed a hotel until 1893. In 1893, Calamity appeared in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show with many other great western performers, such as sharpshooter Annie Oakley. Calamity was working as a storyteller, but again, her drinking interfered with her ability to perform.

Calamity and her daughter arrived in Deadwood, without her husband, in 1896. The many years of hard drinking and smoking had changed her appearance and her friends were shocked and saddened to see these changes. One acquaintance, Ben Arnold, famous for his own exploits as an Indian fighter, wrote that she had changed so much he did not recognize her.

Nevertheless, Calamity was offered lucrative employment. She was hired to play herself in a traveling show about the Wild West. In her autobiography, she tells of her first "engagement" held at the Palace Museum, Minneapolis, January 20th, 1896. According to a 2001 article in Deadwood Magazine titled "Girls of the Gulch," Calamity's autobiography made its appearance about the same time she started performing in the show. Her first performance in the show also marks the end of her story in her autobiography.

Calamity drank so heavily during her time with the show that she was fired. She was broke, and she gave away copies of her autobiography in saloons to pay for her alcohol. In 1899, she once again arrived in Deadwood with her daughter. Her friends, saddened by her degradation and concerned for her child, arranged a benefit on her behalf. Calamity abandoned her child at a hotel and spent the evening drinking at a local saloon until she spent all of the money from the benefit. Her child was turned over to foster parents.

Calamity Jane was next spotted at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition. In 1902, explorer Louis Freeman found her in Yellowstone. They shared a few beers, then he took photographs of Calamity smoking a cigar. In 1903, Calamity returned to Madam Dora DuFran's in the Black Hills, cooking and doing laundry for the other women who worked at the brothel.

In August of 1903, Calamity Jane failed to show up for work. She was found in her room at the Calloway Hotel, dying. She told her friends that she wanted to be buried next to Wild Bill Hickok and they complied. According to James D. Horan, her funeral is believed to have been one of the largest to ever take place in Deadwood. The rector of the Mt. Moriah Cemetery in South Dakota where she is buried, the man who closed her coffin, was C.H. Robinson, the young boy she had saved during the smallpox epidemic so many years before in Deadwood.

Thank you so very much!

I believe I have repaired my blog with the assistance and advice of my many readers--there was a bad url in one of the posts and for some reason this shut the entire blog down. I would not have found it without your suggestions. Thank you all so much--you are so kind!

Household Tips for Living in the Old West

In the early 1800s, four fifths of all Americans worked on farms, either as the owner of the farm or hired hands. To say such work was exhausting is an understatement and as the larger cities in the North opened more and more factories, many settlers abandoned their farms for industry jobs, including the women.

However, some women learned to thrive in their new roles on small farms, often by sharing household tips, such as these offered by a Mrs. Childs printed in The American Frugal Housewife in 1836. Some of these tips are particularly interesting to me as they are similar to advice we might offer our children today when they start their own families and move into their first home, tips such as covering the water pump in cold weather, which would be similar to the advice to insulate water pipes when the weather dips below freezing. Most of all, though, this list interests me because it is a quick glimpse into the lifestyles of women in the early to mid-1800s and the things that concerned them as housewives.

Household Tips by Mrs. Childs

Look frequently to the pails to make sure that nothing is thrown to the pigs which should have been in the grease-pot. See that the beef and pork are always under brine, and that the brine is sweet and clean. [Brine is water filled with large quantities of salt.] An ox's gall [derived from the bile of oxen and often used in mixing paints] will set any color--silk, cotton, or woolen. I have seen the colors of calico, which faded at one washing, fixed by it. Where one lives near a slaughterhouse the gall can be bought for a few cents.

Eggs will keep almost any length of time in lime-water properly prepared. One pint of coarse salt and one pint of unslacked lime to a pailful of water. If there be too much lime, it will eat the shells from the eggs; and if there be a single egg cracked, it will spoil the whole. They should be kept covered with lime-water, and in a cold place. I have seen eggs, thus kept, perfectly sweet and fresh at the end of three years. [I think I would take her word on that one. A three year old egg does not sound appealing! However, if you are traveling by ship or in a wagon train, this type of advice on food preservation could save your life!]

If feather beds smell badly, or become heavy from want of proper preservation of the feathers or old age, empty them and wash the feathers thoroughly in a tub of suds, then spread them in your garret [I believe this refers to the attic.] They will dry, and be as light and as good as new. New England rum, constantly used to wash the hair, keeps it very clean and free from disease [No doubt!] and promotes hair growth a great deal more than Macassar oil. [Macassar Oil was a popular compound oil used as a hair conditioner and stylist in the Victorian Era that continued in use during the years of the Old West.]

Barley straw is the best for beds; dry corn husks, slit into shreds, are far better than straw. In winter, always set your pump as high as possible before you go to bed. Except in very frigid weather this keeps the handle from freezing. When there is reason to apprehend extreme cold, do not forget to throw a rug or horse blanket over your pump; a frozen pump is a comfortless preparation for a winter's breakfast.

Very hard and durable candles are made in the following manner: Melt together ten ounces of mutton tallow, a quarter of an ounce of camphor, four ounces of beeswax, and two ounces of alum. Candles of these materials burn with a very clear light. [I have made my own herbal candles. It is a bit time-consuming, but fun and rewarding.]

Honey mixed with pulverized charcoal is said to be excellent to clean the teeth and make them white. [I've recently read suggestions for honey and charcoal separately as tooth whiteners on a holistic website.] Limewater with a little Peruvian bark is very good to be occasionally used by those who have defective teeth, or an offensive breath. [And I thought they simply pulled "defective teeth" in the Wild West!]

Artist Alfred Jacob Miller: Creating the American West

There are many ways to define the creation of a country. A country is built by its people, cultures, history, literature, and art. For instance, when the United States was still in its early stages of formation, it didn't have centuries of literary greats like England's William Shakespeare or Christopher Marlowe and it certainly did not have a vast collection of artistic masterpieces like those created by Peter Paul Rubens or Hans Holbein. The work of Alfred Jacob Miller is of great importance to Americans because he was dedicated to documenting the early years of this country--the people, towns, and land--when it was first forming.

Alfred Jacob Miller was born in 1810, the son of a local grocer in Baltimore, Maryland. Miller's father raised him on the types of tales that thrill young boys, stories of mountain men sharing meals with local Indian tribes and wrestling giant grizzly bears. These stories were so vivid in Miller's young mind that he decided to dedicate his life to paint, to document the early years of the American Old West, the Wild West.

Miller was in luck. He had talent. His early work showed such great promise that his family encouraged him to pursue his dream--a career in art. He was blessed to be able to study with the talented portrait artist Thomas Sully in Baltimore, and his work soon attracted the attention of the wealthy entrepreneur Johns Hopkins who commissioned Miller for a portrait of a family member. Hopkins (Johns Hopkins University) and Baltimore merchant Robert Gilmor decided to sponsor Miller’s European education, which started in Rome, continued at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and possibly included some time in Switzerland. When Miller was 27 he returned to the United States and settled in New Orleans where he resumed his painting career.

In 1837, Miller received an invitation for adventure. He was approached by Sir William Drummond Stewart, a captain who served under Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo. Stewart was friends with traders, trappers and mountain men in the Wyoming territory through his many travels and was planning to return to the territory with alcohol, cigars, and survival supplies for these friends. Drummond invited Miller to join him to make on-site sketches of his long-time companions. This was a dream come true for Miller who was eager for adventure.

Miller, Captain Stewart and his men traveled along the Platte and Missouri rivers near St. Louis to the end of the Oregon Trail in Wyoming territory. Miller recorded every personal encounter with his sketch pad, including meetings with Lakota, Shoshone, and Nez Perce. He made over 100 sketches of the first wave of European men to make their living off the lands of the American West, men whose livelihood would soon disappear as wave after wave of settlers moved in and the American West transformed into the Wild West we know so well today. Miller later used these sketches to make detailed oil paintings of the fur trappers and traders, paintings that were particularly valuable to adventurers who had also traveled through the Rockies in the early 1800s and treasured Miller's documentation of their past.

Miller made one trip through the Wyoming territory, his adventure with Captain Stewart and his men, but in that short period of time, Miller created American history by sketching some of the most famous mountain men of the Rocky Mountains. With paintings such as his 1837 "Bartering for a Bride," also known as "The Trapper's Bride," and "Medicine Circles," Miller also documented a moment that was rarely repeated in American history. Miller spent the rest of his life revising these images for the citizens of Baltimore in a more dramatic style, his signature style, that became popular for the times. Sadly, he retired from professional painting in 1872 and died two years later in 1874. He left behind a remarkable legacy. Miller created far more than simple works of art, Miller made history, creating a body of work that now represents the talent and abilities of American artists.