True Tales of Old-Time Kansas / Edition 1

by David Dary

Overview

"Authentic history, delightfully told" is the way Ray A. Billington, renowned historian of the Old West, described this collection. David Dary, award-winning chronicler of life on the frontier plains, is at his entertaining best in these thirty-nine episodes, sagas, and tales from Kansas's vigorous, free-spirited past. Many of the stories appeared in Dary's True Tales of the Old-Time Plains, but that book, out of print for several years, focused on the Great Plains in general. This new edition, revised and with additional stories and a new title, pulls together tales about people, animals and events in what is today Kansas, including the old territory of Kansas (1854-1861) that stretched from the Missouri River westward to the summit of the Rocky Mountains.

Many of the tales capture the romance, excitement, and adventure of the Old West, while others have the tempo of a quiet life surrounded by the immensity of the plains and prairies. There are well-known characters: Bill Cody, the Dalton gang, the Bloody Benders, William Clarke Quantrill, Abraham Lincoln, and Frederic Remington, who once owned a Kansas sheep ranch and later was a silent partner in a Kansas City saloon before he became a well-known artist.

And there are stories, too, about little-known characters such as Prairie Dog Dave Morrow, who made his living capturing live prairie dogs. Dary relates tales of lost treasure and sudden riches, of outlaws and "jayhawk" raiders, of massacres and heroics. A generous number of illustrations help bring the tales to life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780700602506
Publisher:	University Press of Kansas
Publication date:	07/20/1984
Series:	Kansas and the Region Series
Edition description:	REVISED
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	1,058,829
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

Table of Contents

Preface

Part I: Over the Trails

-Milt Bryan’s Adventure on the Santa Fe Trail

-The Massacre on Walnut Creek

-A Ride for Life

-The Crazy Bet of F. X. Aubry

-Windwagons and Samuel Peppard

-Bill Cody and the Pony Express

-The Battle of Coon Creek

-The Story of Daniel Blue

Part II: Buried Treasure on the Plains

-The Big Springs Treasure

-The Du Pratz Gold Mine

-Don Antonio Jose Chavez’s Treasure

-Jesus M. Martinez’s Treasure

-The Dutch Oven Treasure

-The Nemaha River Treasure

-The Paymaster’s Treasure

Part III: The Lawless and Lawmen

-The Man Who Really Tamed Abilene

-The Collapse of the Dalton Gang

-The Shootout in Perry Tuttle’s Dance Hall

-The Bloody Benders

-William Clarke Quantrill: Was He a Madman?

-The Tale Texans Don’t Like to Tell

Part IV: Men, Women, and Animals

-Old Dan the Ox and Bob Wright

-Prairie Dog Dave

-Jim Caspion’s White Buffalo

-The Saga of Black Kettle

-The Germon Sisters

-The First “Real” Bullfight in the United States

-Comanche

-Lilly’s Escape and Unbelievable Ride

Part V: The Famous and Obscure

-The Hermit Priest of Belfry Hill

-Frederic Remington: Sheep Rancher and Saloon Owner

-When Abe Lincoln Came to Kansas

-Jim Lane and His Frontier Guard

-What Happened to Boston Corbett?

-The Song “Home on the Range”

-The First White Woman to Climb Pike’s Peak

-The Legend of Smoky Hill Thompson

-Battle at Pawnee Rock

-Henry Worrall, Kansas Artist

Notes and Credits

Sources of Illustrations

Index

Editorial Reviews

"Rollicking, adventurous, touching. Whether the reader invests only a few minutes at a time or finishes the book at one sitting, he is in for a lot of fun."—American West

"Fascinating tales set down succinctly and excitingly."—Kansas City Times

"This book reads like a collection of short stories, but it is not fiction. Highly recommended."—Library Journal

"A fun book. Where else but in the frontier West were such stories really lived?"—Richard Bartlett, author of Great Surveys of the American West and The New Country: A Social History of the American Frontier

From the Publisher

Rollicking, adventurous, touching. The reader is in for a lot of fun.

American West

Fascinating tales set down succinctly and excitingly.

Kansas City Times