1882

"Portrait of an Indian" by Charles Russell.

April 3: The historian, Benjamin Andrews, writing in 1896, presents the following picture of Jesse James, killed on this day: 

During the years under survey Missouri as well as the Pacific States had to contend with aggravated lawlessness. When hardly a week passed without a train being “held up” somewhere in the state, Governor Crittenden was driven to the terrible expedient of using crime itself as a police power. In the spring of 1882, Jesse James, the noted desperado, was assassinated by former members of his gang, who then surrendered to the authorities and were lodged in jail – none too soon, as an angry populace, gathered in thousands, hotly beset the slayers. The slayers and slain had been Confederate guerrillas in the war. On the return of peace they became train-robbers as easily as privateers turned pirates. James, at any rate, had not been inspired by lust of gain, for in spite of robberies amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars he died poor. He had been a church member, concerned for “his wayward brother” Frank’s salvation. After his death his sect in Missouri repudiated him, while expressing strongest disapproval of the treachery used in his taking off. For nearly twenty years every effort to capture the fellow had proved futile. The nature of the country aided him, but not so much as the enthusiastic devotion of his neighbors.

 

This murderous chief, this ruthless man,

this head of a rebellious clan,

 

had made himself a hero. The Sedalia Democrat said: “It was his country. The graves of his kindred were there. He refused to be banished from his birthright, and when he was hunted he turned savagely about and hunted his hunters. Would to God he were alive to-day to make a righteous butchery of a few more of them.”

 

By thus fighting fire with fire, Governor Crittenden succeeded in dispersing three other desperado bands. Upon being arraigned the men-killers pleaded guilty and were sentenced to be hanged, but they were at once pardoned. The Governor’s policy, however, was most unpopular. Infinite hatred and scorn were visited upon the betrayers. James’s wife and mother cursed them bitterly; Dick Little, chief traitor, became the object of their uttermost loathing. “If Timberlake or Craig (the county sheriff and his deputy) had killed my poor boy,” cried the mother, “I would not say one word; But, O God! The treachery of Dick Little and those boys! Craig and Timberlake are noble men, and they have done too much for me. My poor boy who now lies there dead told me if they killed him not to say one word.” Craig and Timberlake were pall-bearers at James’s funeral. The Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad extended courtesies to the bereaved widow and mother, who were on all hands treated as the heroines of the hour. (11/381-382)

 

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May 6: Congress passes the Chinese Exclusion Act, repudiating a more balanced treaty agreement. Andrews explains: 

That compact, recognizing as inalienable the right of every man to change his abode, had permitted the free immigration of Chinamen into the United States. The new treaty of 1881 so modified this feature that immigration might be regulated, limited or suspended by us for no specific period should it threaten to affect the interests of the United States or to endanger their good order. A bill soon followed prohibiting Chinese immigration for a period of twenty years, on the ground that the presence of the Mongolians caused disorder in certain localities. This was the bill which President Arthur vetoed as contravening the treaty, he objecting, among much else, to the systems of passports and registration which the bill would impose upon resident Chinese. But the advocates of the exclusion policy were in earnest, wrought up by the growing hordes of Celestials pressing hither.

 

Only sixty-three thousand Chinese had been in the country in 1870; in 1880 there were one hundred and five thousand. Another bill was at once introduced, substituting ten for twenty years as the time of suspension, and it became a law in 1882.

 

(The new law did allow merchants, teachers, students, travelers and diplomats to enter the country.)

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In his collection, Specimen Days and Collect, Walt Whitman wrote that “a walk in New York, with its daily contact and rapport with its myriad people, was the best, most effective medicine my soul as yet partaken.”

 

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“The death by gunfire of a human being.”

A notice in a San Antonio newspaper announces that a new bar is being opened in Eagle’s Nest Springs, in Pecos County. The proprietor is Roy Bean, soon to be famous as Judge Roy Bean. It was said in those days that, “West of the Pecos there is no law; West of El Paso there is no God.” 

Or as someone once described a railroad that ran between San Antonio and El Paso, it went “from no place through nothing to nowhere.” (The Pecos now forms Red Bluff Reservoir, near the southern border of New Mexico, with Texas, and several other lakes north and south. Finally, any water left spills into the Rio Grande, about the miles southwest of the unincorporated community of Langtry, Texas.) 

As a young man, Bean had left Kentucky, where he was born, to follow two brothers West. With brother Sam, he joined a wagon train to New Mexico, crossed into Mexico, and did business operating a trading post. Roy “got into a bit of a dustup when an hombre died from one of his bullets,” as one modern writer put. (Smithsonian, “Hang ’em First, Try ’em Later,” May 31, 1998, by Bruce Watson.) 

 

That’s a rather mild phrasing to describe the death by gunfire of a human being; and we forget how violent our ancestors could be. Watson says Roy crossed back into the United States and in 1849, ended up in San Diego, where his brother Joshua would soon become mayor. Roy, 

…strutted the streets in a sombrero and embroidered pants, with two guns in his belt and a bowie knife in one boot. The darling of local senoritas, he developed a reputation for bragging, dueling, and gambling on cockfights. To tame his wild brother, Mayor Josh Bean made Roy a Lieutenant in the state militia and bartender of the Headquarters, the mayor’s own saloon. The taming worked for a while, but in 1852, Roy wounded a man in a duel. Arrested, he broke out of jail. A few months later, Josh was killed by his rival in a romantic triangle, and Roy rambled back to New Mexico where Sam Bean had become a sheriff.

 

Roy quietly tended bar in Sam’s saloon for several years. When the Civil War broke out, he began running the Union blockade, bringing goods by wagon from the Mexican border into Texas. After the war, and pushing 40, he married a Mexican teenager and settled in San Antonio. Throughout the 1870s, while various parts of Texas exploded in range wars, Bean was a dishonest working man supporting five children. He peddled firewood (cut without permission on another man’s land) and sold milk (watered down). Once when a customer found a minnow in his milk, Roy responded, “By Gobs, that’s what I get for waterin’ them cows down at the river. His notorious business schemes earned his San Antonio neighborhood the nickname “Beanville.” But when his marriage began to fail, Roy resurrected his romance with the untamed West.

 

Judge Bean had never been to law school, but would run a court out of his bar at Eagle’s Nest and bring as much order as he could. On August 2, 1882, he was appointed “Justice of the Peace for Precinct No. 6, Pecos County, Texas.” As Smithsonian explained, Bean had one law book, The Revised Statues of Texas, 1879. “They send me a new book every year or so, but I use it to light fires with,” he once admitted. Other than that, “Roy Bean’s justice was governed by greed, prejudice and a dash of common sense.” On one occasion, seated behind his own bar, from which he dispensed rulings, he divorced two couples, and charged a court fee of $2 per couple. Then he married each of the men to the other’s ex-wife, and pocketed another $5 each for his work. 

Bean once presided over a coroner’s inquest, after a railroad bridge over Pecos River Canyon collapsed, and ten workers fell 300 feet. Even though three victims were still alive, Judge Bean declared them dead, saying, “Them three fellers is bound to die.” That earned him an extra $5 for each ruling. On another occasion a corpse was fished out of the Pecos River, and $40 and a pistol were found in the deceased’s pockets. It has been said that Judge Bean fined the dead man $40 for “carrying a concealed weapon,” and kept the money. 

Bean is often referred to as a “hanging judge,” but Judge Isaac Parker of Fort Smith, Arkansas may hold a record. He sentenced 172 men to be hanged, and 88 did go to the gallows.

Pining for Lillie Langtry.

Bean soon moved his business to a little town named Langtry, overlooking the Rio Grande. The town was named after a railroad boss who had run the Southern Pacific through it. Bean claimed he named the town himself, after the famous English actress of that era, Lillie Langtry. In fact, he named his bar the Jersey Lilly. The judge hoped to meet her someday. In 1888, Langtry did appear onstage in San Antonio. Bean dressed up, took the train, and bought a ticket in the front row. But after she performed, he was too shy to meet her. He often wrote fan letters. Once she wrote back and offered to buy the town of Langtry a fountain. Bean declined, saying of the townsfolk, “If there’s anything these hombres of Langtry don’t drink, it’s water.”

Judge Bean's dream girl, Lillie Langtry, in a play as Cleopatra.

 

When not drinking, or watching Bean hand out fines for cursing, patrons could also watch a pet bear named Bruno drink beer, after using his teeth to pull the cork on the bottles. 

Roy’s favorite expression was, “By Gobs,” instead of “By God.” Instead of a gavel, he rapped the butt of a revolver on a table to get everyone’s attention. In one infamous case, it is said an Irishman working on the railroad killed a Chinaman. Friends of the accused warned they would tear down the saloon if the accused were convicted. Judge Bean made a show of leafing through his law book, then announced, “Gentlemen, I find the law very explicit on murdering your fellow man, but there’s nothing here about killing a Chinaman. Case dismissed.”

“Unfortunately, this one is probably true.”

The writer for the Smithsonian says of this tale, “Unfortunately, this one is probably true.” (In this era, we know Chinese persons were not allowed to testify against white people in court in some states.) 

On another occasion: 

Sam Bean was the youngest and wildest of Roy’s five children. One day in the saloon, a certain Mr. George Upshaw made fun of Sam’s fine Mexican blanket. The two men argued, and Upshaw slapped Sam in the face, drawing blood. Roy said simply, “Shoot him, Sam – shoot him.” Obeying his father, Sam blew the man away. For the next year, Roy corralled witnesses and promised favors. In a Del Rio court room in 1899, Sam Bean was acquitted. The verdict, a Langtry old-timer remembered, cost Roy “many a bottle of beer” and nearly all the money he'd managed to save. (102)

 

One biographer says there is no evidence that Judge Bean ever hung anyone; but the judge did once say he had the cleanest docket in Texas, “not a scratch of a pen on it.” That is: He didn’t bother keeping records. In one typical ruling, he told a defendant, “I fine you two dollars; then get the hell out of here and never show yourself in this court again. That’s my rulin’.” 

In 1896, Bean’s most famous stunt played out. Bob Fitzsimmons and Peter Maher, two famous heavyweight fighters, were scheduled for a bout in Arkansas, but prizefighting was banned in that state. Several other venues fell through, and the fighters and hundreds of fans ended up in El Paso, but were again blocked. Soon a telegram arrived. Judge Bean invited everyone to board the train and visit Langtry. After rounds of drinks were downed, Bean led the two fighters and all other interested parties down to the Rio Grande, where a fight was held inside a makeshift ring, constructed on a sandbar. 

The myth only grew in 1940, when Walter Brennan played Judge Bean in a movie titled The Westerner, starring Gary Cooper. In 1972, Paul Newman revisted the role of Bean in The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean.

 

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“They are reduced to the condition of paupers.” 

The veteran Indian fighter, Col. Richard Dodge, remarks on the destruction of the vast buffalo herds: “Ten years ago the Plains Indians had an ample supply of food…. Now everything is gone, and they are reduced to the condition of paupers, without food, shelter, clothing, or any of those necessaries of life which came from the Buffalo.” (NG, 11-1994, p. 71.)

 

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John Greenleaf Whittier publishes the poem:

 

On the Big Horn 

The years are but half a score,
And the war-whoop sounds no more
   With the blast of bugles, where
Straight into a slaughter pen,
With his doomed three hundred men,
   Rode the chief with the yellow hair. 

O Hampton, down by the sea!
What voice is beseeching thee
   For the scholar’s lowliest place?
Can this be the voice of him

Who fought on the Big Horn’s rim?
   Can this be Rain-in-the-Face?

His war-paint is washed away,
His hands have forgotten to slay;
   He seeks for himself and his race
The arts of peace and the lore
That give to the skilled hand more
   Than the spoils of war and chase.

O chief of the Christ-like school!
Can the zeal of thy heart grow cool

   When the victor scarred with fight
Like a child for thy guidance craves,
And the faces of hunters and braves
   Are turning to thee for light?

The hatchet lies overgrown
With grass by the Yellowstone,
   Wind River and Paw of Bear;
And, in sign that foes are friends,
Each lodge like a peace-pipe sends
   Its smoke in the quiet air.

The hands that have done the wrong
To right the wronged are strong,
   And the voice of a nation saith:
“Enough of the war of swords,
Enough of the lying words
   And shame of a broken faith!”

The hills that have watched afar
The valleys ablaze with war
   Shall look on the tasselled corn;
And the dust of the grinded grain,
Instead of the blood of the slain,
   Shall sprinkle thy banks, Big Horn!

The Ute and the wandering Crow
Shall know as the white men know,
   And fare as the white men fare;
The pale and the red shall be brothers,
One’s rights shall be as another’s,
   Home, School, and House of Prayer!   

O mountains that climb to snow,
O river winding below,
   Through meadows by war once trod,
O wild, waste lands that await
The harvest exceeding great,
   Break forth into praise of God!