("Highly, highly recommended for anyone who has ever been ...)
"Highly, highly recommended for anyone who has ever been the slightest bit interested in the American West and cowboy culture."—LibraryThing.com reviewer
"A fresh, firsthand narrative of the gold rush and its consequences"—Kansas History
Listen to Paul Hedren on SDPB Radio's Dakota Midday
In 1875, a young man from Pennsylvania joined the Dodge Expedition into the Black Hills of Dakota Territory, from where he penned letters to the Omaha Daily Bee. Not content with accompanying Dodge, Captain Jack returned to the Black Hills in 1876 for a further six months.
John Wallace Crawford, who became better known as Captain Jack, wrote a vibrant account of this fascinating time in the American West. His correspondence featured his adventures in the early Black Hills gold rush as he played the parts of reporter, plainsman, scout, and raconteur. Captain Jack informed his readers, in great detail and with an eye for the unusual and intriguing, of the relative merits of the gulches, the vagaries and difficulties of travel in the region, the art of survival in what was essentially wilderness, the hardships of inclement weather, trouble with outlaws, and interactions with American Indians.
Captain Jack met and worked with Buffalo Bill Cody and quickly seized the opportunity to scout for Brigadier General George Crook on his Indian campaign. Jack’s correspondence from the Starvation March and the fight at Slim Buttes offers detailed and intimate accounts of these dramatic episodes of the Great Sioux War.
Award-winning historian Paul Hedren has compiled these almost unknown letters, writing an introduction and essays that place the correspondence in the greater context of the Black Hills Gold Rush and the Great Sioux War. The result is a treasure trove of hitherto hidden primary documents as well as a ripping yarn in the traditions of the old West.
John Wallace Crawford, known as "The Poet Scout", was an Irish-born American adventurer, educator, and author. He served as a Chief of Scouts of the United States Army.
Background
John Wallace Crawford was born on March 04, 1847 in County Donegal, Ireland, the son of John Austin and Susie (Wallace) Crawford. The mother claimed descent from the famous chieftain, William Wallace. The father, a Glasgow tailor, when threatened with arrest for some seditious utterance, fled to Ireland, where he met and married Miss Wallace.
Career
In 1854 Crawford came to America, finding work as a coal miner at Minersville, Pennsylvania, and four years later the mother and children followed. The boy began to work in the mines at an early age and thus had no opportunities for schooling.
On the opening of the Civil War the father enlisted in the army, and the boy, after two rejections on account of his youth, was accepted for service in the 48th Pennsylvania Volunteers. At Spottsylvania, May 12, 1864, he was badly wounded. In the Saterlee Hospital, in West Philadelphia, through the efforts of a Sister of Charity, he learned to read and write. He was again sent to the front, and at Petersburg, April 2, 1865, was again wounded. Shortly afterward his mother and father died, his mother exacting a deathbed promise from him that he would never touch liquor.
About 1869 he went West, where for several years he was variously employed. He is said to have been one of the first seven men to enter the Black Hills region after the Custer expedition of 1874. A local document dated April 25, 1876, mentions him as a member of the Board of Trustees of Custer City and chief of scouts for a volunteer organization known as the Black Hills Rangers.
In the Sioux War of that year he served as a scout and messenger for both Merritt and Crook, and on August 24 succeeded Cody (Buffalo Bill) as Merritt’s chief of scouts. The later served as a scout in the campaigns against the Apaches. He was for a time post trader at Fort Craig, New Mexico, and later a special agent of the Indian Bureau.
Near San Marcial, on the Rio Grande, in 1886, he established a ranch, which for the remainder of his life was his main home, though he also had a home in Brooklyn. He had by the late seventies become famous as a composer and reciter of verses. His first volume, The Poet Scout, was published in 1879 and was succeeded by a revised and enlarged edition of the same work (1886); Camp Fire Sparks (1893); Lariattes (1904), and The Broncho Book (1908). He also wrote three plays, in the production of which he took the leading part, and more than one hundred short stories. As a lecturer and a reciter of his own verses he was a noted figure for many years. He died in his Brooklyn home.
Crawford was a tall man of wiry build, with nervous, sensitive face. He wore his hair and beard after the fashion of his friend Buffalo Bill, and he dressed the part of a “poet scout. ” His histrionic embellishments seem, however, to have been chiefly a concession to the public demand, for he was at bottom simple and unaffected. “I am simply Jack Crawford, ” he said, “boy soldier, rustic poet, scout, bad actor, etc. ”
Connections
Crawford married Anna M. Stokes of Numidia, Pennsylvania, in 1869.