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| Above, the statue of John Chisum in Roswell, New Mexico. Photo by Armand Vaquer |
Back in 1970, Batjac Productions produced the movie, Chisum, starring John Wayne, Forrest Tucker, Bruce Cabot and Ben Johnson. Chisum was a fictionalized account of the Lincoln County War in New Mexico Territory. It was released by Warner Bros.
While the movie was entertaining (and factually inaccurate), it condensed the Lincoln County War into either a few days or weeks. Whereas, the wars lasted from 1878 to 1881. Also involved was William "Billy the Kid" Bonney.
Murphy actually died of cancer instead of falling onto steer horns during a fist fight with Chisum as portrayed in Chisum.
According to Wikipedia:
The Lincoln County War was an Old West conflict between rival factions which began in 1878 in Lincoln County, New Mexico Territory, the predecessor of the state of New Mexico, and continued until 1881. The feud became famous because of the participation of William H. Bonney ("Billy the Kid"). Other notable participants included Sheriff William J. Brady, cattle rancher John Chisum, lawyer and businessmen Alexander McSween, James Dolan and Lawrence Murphy.
The conflict began between two factions competing for profits from dry goods and cattle interests in the county. The older, established faction was dominated by James Dolan, who operated a dry goods monopoly through a general store referred to locally as "The House". English-born John Tunstall and his business partner Alexander McSween opened a competing store in 1876, with backing from established cattleman John Chisum. The two sides gathered lawmen, businessmen, Tunstall's ranch hands, and criminal gangs to their assistance. The Dolan faction was allied with Lincoln County Sheriff Brady and aided by the Jesse Evans Gang. The Tunstall-McSween faction organized their own posse of armed men, known as the Lincoln County Regulators, and had their own lawmen consisting of town constable Richard M. Brewer and Deputy US Marshal Robert A. Widenmann.
The conflict was marked by revenge killings, starting with the murder of Tunstall by members of the Evans Gang. In revenge for this, the Regulators killed Sheriff Brady and others in a series of incidents. Further killings continued unabated for several months, climaxing in the battle of Lincoln, a five-day gunfight and siege that resulted in the death of McSween and the scattering of the Regulators. Pat Garrett was named County Sheriff in 1880, and he hunted down Billy the Kid, killing two other former Regulators in the process.
The war was fictionalized by several Hollywood movies, including The Left Handed Gun in 1958, John Wayne’s Chisum in 1970, Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid in 1973 and Young Guns in 1988. Ron Hansen’s novel The Kid (2016) is also inspired by the Lincoln County War.
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| Above, Pat Garrett. |
Pat Garrett later became known as the man who shot Billy the Kid.
From HistoryNet:
A soft-spoken and modest man, Garrett abhorred such encounters. “I sometimes wish that I had missed fire, and that the Kid had got his work in on me,” he lamented to a friend.
Garrett’s feat of single-handedly killing one of the West’s most notorious outlaws had been a double-edged sword. It had given him instant celebrity, a cash bonanza via a reward and donations from grateful citizens, and entrée to prominent politicians and businessmen. But the dead outlaw’s growing legend also haunted Garrett. Kid sympathizers branded Garrett a coward for shooting down Billy in the dark and claimed the Kid was unarmed to boot. And in Garrett’s later years, many viewed him as a violence-prone relic from an unseemly past.
Pat Garrett deserved better. The man had his flaws, but he was a sure enough hero when New Mexico needed one, and he rates in retrospect as one of the West’s greatest lawmen.
Although Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett weren't friends, they did gamble together and the Kid called Garrett "Big Casino" and Garrett called the Kid "Little Casino". At least Chisum got that right.
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