Cowboy Christmas Festivities

By Andrea Downing

Although we only have one week to go ’til the Big Day, I thought I’d have a look around at some Cowboy Christmas events yet to take place.  If you’re like me, you probably leave a lot of preparations until the last minute anyway, so if any of these are within your driving distance, or you’re looking for a short break, maybe one of these will get you in the spirit.

Over in Bandera, Texas, purported Cowboy Capital of the World, celebrations started on Dec. 7^th  but the best is yet to come. On Dec. 21, there is ‘Singing in the Saddle’ with a caroling parade around Bandera. And on the 28^th, Cowboys on Main has performances with music, chuck wagons, ropers, and wagon rides.

Over in Prescott, AZ, which claims to have the oldest professional rodeo in the world (July 4, 1888) celebrations are well under way but the Annual Gingerbread Village display can still be seen at the conference center and proceeds benefit the Hungry Kids Project. But for a real cowboy New Year’s Eve, watch the Whiskey Row Boot Drop—and I needn’t tell you what kind of a boot it is!

Elko, NV, is known as a cowboy’s paradise and is also home to the grand-daddy of cowboy poetry festivals, The National Cowboy Gathering, coming up in late Jan.   As for Christmas, we’ve missed the cattle-woman’s tour of festive homes but there’ll be a huge party at the Northeastern Nevada Museum on the 19^th.  It includes gaming tables and raffles and auctions—sounds like a lot of fun!

Deadwood, SD, needs no introduction as a cowboy hangout, or perhaps I should say an outlaw’s hangout. As I write, the Black Hills Cowboy Christmas is taking place but there’re still plenty of events to come. For last minute shoppers, there’s the Christmas Shoppers’ Village over at the High Plains Western Heritage Center.

Finally, my adopted hometown of Jackson, WY, may not have festivities particularly associated with cowboys, but the horse-drawn sleigh rides through the Elk Refuge will certainly make up for it—and there are plenty of Stetson-wearing punchers around town.  The town square is beautifully lit and Santa makes regular visits, and the Wort Hotel has twelve days of varied events—everything from gingerbread baking lessons to a brunch with Santa. After that, you can count down to New Year’s Eve and party at the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar, where the barstools are saddles, the drinks bring good cheer, and the music will keep your toes tapping right into 2020.

Very Best Wishes for Christmas and the most Joyous, Successful, and Healthy 2020

Photo of Prescott Boot Drop, City of Prescott Office of Tourism.

Million Dollar Cowboy Bar, author's own

cartoons clip-art or public domain

Digging to China: Unearthing a Frontier Chinatown

by Patti Sherry-Crews

Go to any Chinatown found in cities around the world, and you get that feeling of being transported to the Orient without even leaving the country. I'm sure many of us have enjoyed dining and shopping in these neighborhoods with their distinctive looking, colorful buildings. But less familiar to us would be the vanished Gold Rush Chinatowns that cropped up alongside mining camps.

These places aren't as well documented as the boom-towns they grew up within, but in recent times there's been interest in these communities within a community. An archaeological dig in Deadwood, South Dakota revealed some clues of the life of the Chinese immigrants in the 19th century.

The Boom Town of Deadwood, S.D., 1876 (wiki-commons)

What induce a person to travel so far to a land half a world away where everything from the language to the culture would be an unknown? In this case gold was the enticement. When word of the discovery of gold reached China, it set off a steady stream of migration. Chinese, mainly from the Guangdong Province, an area hit by the Opium Wars with Britain, revolution, famine, and crop failure, headed to America--note these immigrants would primarily be men venturing out alone, leaving their families behind.

Unfortunately, making a fortune in the gold mines didn't always go as planned. Coming into competition with white miners, the Chinese soon found themselves given limited mining rights or restricted to mines that were thought to be depleted. In the face of that, the immigrants found employment building the railroad. But once the rail-line was complete, they had to find new occupations.

They sought out ways that didn't compete with or threaten their white neighbors. Seeing opportunity in the mining camps, where there were few women in proportion to men, the Chinese set up businesses that catered to the miners: laundries, restaurants, housework, and restaurants for examples (water from washing miners clothes were screened for gold dust).

In 1870's, gold was found in the Black Hills and the town of Deadwood was born. If you've ever been to Deadwood, you know it's built in a narrow gulch nestled in the mountains with little room to expand beyond its central streets. It's a crowded, bustling town, which I imagine was much the same back in its early days. It was at the south end of Main Street that the Chinese settled. We don't know how large the Chinese population was but it seemed to have ranged from over 200 to up to 500 residents.

If you're a fan of the series Deadwood (and I am), you may be familiar with Chinatown pigpens being a convenient place to dispose of bodies. Fiction. That never happened, so let's start with putting that notion to rest. Likewise, don't imagine the Chinatowns you may be familiar, with the characteristic oriental features. Deadwood Chinatown seemed to have looked like the rest of the town. Nothing of it remains today. Buildings and people are all gone.

In 2001 a team of archaeologists from the South Dakota State Archaeological Research Center began a four year project. Using old fire insurance maps, they were able to locate the area that was once Chinatown.

Imported Porcelain and Pottery found during excavation (City of Deadwood)

A spot where a boarding house had burned down hid a treasure trove of artifacts, because the building collapsed on the contents of the house. Among the things found were gaming pieces, pottery, tableware, everyday personal hygiene aids, hair ornaments, Chinese coins, opium paraphernalia, and more.

As unpleasant as it might seem, another place archaeologists get excited digging around in are the privies. Much of the trash of the day would be thrown into them. In addition to man-made objects, animal bones and botanical refuse, such as seeds, give clues to the diet of the people who lived there. Keeping in mind they didn't have a garbage collection like we do, the privy was a popular place to dispose of garbage like bottles or objects that had lost their usefulness.

In all, after excavation over 600 boxes of artifacts were recovered and stored.

The picture painted by the findings is one of a community that exported their lifestyle almost whole from China. From the pottery to the medicine bottles to opium, all were brought to America. There was a remarkable oriental-flavored homogeneity to the items unearthed. Even the animal bones tell us the Chinese preferred pork over the beef favored by their neighbors.

Though the Chinese did coexist with the white community while holding onto their ways, cultural exchanges could not be avoided. In the artifacts found, mahjong tiles lay along side gaming dice. American beer bottles mingled with bottles that once held traditional Chinese medicine.

What did the Chinese bring to their non-Chinese neighbors? Of the eleven restaurants in Deadwood, seven of them were Chinese establishments, who not only served frontier fare but also introduced Asian food. Immigrant Fee lee Wong opened the Wing Tsue Emporium, a large store selling imported silk, medicines, porcelain, and other goods to Chinese and non-Chinese alike. Not to be bragged about, but we can't ignore one thing the Chinese brought to Deadwood: opium. The Chinese got the westerners hooked on opium just as the British had gotten the Chinese hooked on the drug. In the early days, opium dens were legal and were treated like saloons, in that to open one all you had to do was apply for a license. Later opium would be outlawed.

Wing Tsue Emporium (image: Adams Museum, Deadwood, S.D.)

Though living cheek to jowl with the other residents of Deadwood, the Chinese maintained their own community. For obvious reasons, they weren't going to blend in the way an European immigrant could, and often being targets for discrimination and even violence, banding together was a means for security and support. Chinatown even had their own fire and police brigades. All that said, the relationship between the Chinese and general population of Deadwood seems to have been relatively harmonious when compared to some of the other settlements of the day. The residents of Deadwood enjoyed Chinese parades and holiday celebrations which might include fireworks.

"The Champion Chinese Hose Team, who won the great Hub-and-Hub race at Deadwood," 1880 (Wiki-commons)

As important and vital as the Chinese community was in the late 19th and early 20th century, it no longer exists. What happened and where did they go?

Remember, this was a wave of migration that typically didn't include women and families. Of course there was a small group of females and children in Deadwood's Chinatown as represented by women's hair ornaments and such and children's toys found in the dig, but the population was heavily weighted on the male side. The typical Chinese male immigrant was sending money back to his family in China. He may have even been under contract, and when he'd fulfilled his obligation, he left America.

To give the Chinese even less incentive to settle, the Exclusion Act in 1882, halted the flow of immigration from China, denying citizenship to even those born here. Men could not send for their families or brides. So when the gold dried up, there was little reason to stay in Deadwood. Just as the town was limited in growth by its geography, Chinese growth was limited by the society of the time. The Chinese moved on to larger communities like you'd find in San Francisco, or they went back to the East.

But while they were there, the Chinese immigrants played an important part in society.

Reconstructed Altar and Burner, Mount Moriah Cemetery (Wiki-Commons)

In the Mount Moriah Cemetery situated on a beautiful pine tree dotted hill you can see the final resting places of such iconic figures like Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok. You can also visit the Chinese altar and ceremonial burner. In 1908, the leaders of the Chinese community were given permission to build the altar and burner to honor their dead in their own way. In later years, decades after the last of the Chinese left, the altar and burner fell into disrepair.

Then in the early part of the 21st century, long after all other traces of the Chinese presence were gone, the city of Deadwood reconstructed the altar and burner, using bricks saved from the demolished Wing Tsue Emporium, to construct it.

To me this unimposing structure tells the tale of the Chinese in Deadwood, South Dakota: their emergence, acceptance, decline, and finally getting a place of honor in the frontier town they helped create.

In the words of Fee Lee Wong's great granddaughter, Edith Wong, who came from California for the dedication of the new altar and burner.

"The addition of this restored burner, just as the integration of the Chinese in a largely white pioneer community, signals acceptance of a different culture and a different way of life," Wong said. "What tangible evidence of the Chinese still exists in Deadwood? Really, not very much. Instead of solely an interpretive sign, this burner will be a physical reminder that the Chinese culture and traditions were definitely an integral part of Deadwood's history."

You can find me at Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Patti-Sherry-Crews/e/B01C7L8QUU/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_4

All the Pretty Horses

Recently I had the awesome opportunity to spend a vacation with my sister--in South Dakota. Yes, while some of my friends are going to Europe this summer, I was positively giddy about visiting the American West! On our girls-only trip (after participating in Wild Deadwood Reads), we made a stop at the Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary.

Look at that blaze!

 This 13,000-acre ranch is a little off the beaten path--but aren't most things that are truly spectacular?

In 1988, Oregon rancher Dayton Hyde raised the money to buy a ranch that had been in existence since the late 1880's. Today, the BHWHS has a herd of 700 wild horses--horses that have never had a saddle on them. They came here because they didn't qualify for the Bureau of Land Management's adoption program. "Listless, dejected, some have lost the will to live. Spirits broken, unwanted, either too old, too ugly, or too independent..." That was under BLM care. At the sanctuary, they thrive!

My sister making friends with a Choctaw pony--a special project at the sanctuary.

 My sister and I took a tour of the ranch and saw all four herds. This really was a spectacular opportunity for us. There were only 6 guests total. We drove out onto the land and saw not only the horses but a hill that is an ancient Sioux burial ground--they found this out because the horses would not walk across the area. Sonar shows hundreds of human bones! Centuries of Sioux at rest.

We also saw the cave where the original owner lived for two years while he built the ranch. Not to mention, remnants of a Pony Express station, and ancient petroglyphs! 

The cave where the original owner lived--for two years!

 You can visit the ranch, support it financially with donations or purchases from the gift shop. You can also adopt a horse virtually or for real! 

I have horses and know how hard it is to keep them pretty and healthy. I can't imagine the work involved in managing a herd of 700 horses, but these animals were beautiful and healthy-looking.

If you ever get to South Dakota, don't miss the sanctuary. And if you have a birthday or anniversary coming up, maybe someone would adopt a horse in your name. What a way to honor the spirit of the American West!

Part of the rock wall from the Pony Express station!

Our guide knew the horses really well. The ones who were nice and the ones who were a little iffy. Here he is pushing away a curious-but-unpredictable stallion.

We would do it again! South Dakota ROCKS!

Putting it all together

The Badlands

The plane begins its descent. The dun-colored ground below is dotted with little, black holes. As we get closer, little animals can be seen scurrying around the holes. "Ground hogs," says the passenger behind me to his wife. For the first time since leaving Chicago the handsome man wearing cowboy boots and a Stetson who is sitting next to me speaks. "No, those are prairie dogs. " (I knew that).

After we land and collect our luggage my husband and I make our way to the rental car lot. Posted on the automatic doors is a sign warning us about rattlesnakes. I start to get excited. West, here we come. When we step outside we are bowled over by the big, blue sky above and the endless fields of golden grassland stretching out before us. The sight sparks a debate between us about which great plains state boasts it's Big Sky Country. Is it South Dakota, where we landed or Montana? We waste some time running around the parking lot looking at car license plates to find said motto (all the while being mindful of rattlesnakes) trying to settle this dispute to no avail. It's Montana, by the way.

Big Sky over Little Bighorn Battlefield, Montana

I'm just a girl with long Midwestern roots, but I've always had a fascination for all things western. I've written both historical and contemporary westerns, relying on images from my computer to create my settings. I have made a number of trips to the southwest, which I love, but never to the other parts west. Writing this blog has sent me on further online excursions. I don't think I knew how much I've really learned until plopping down in South Dakota, jumping up to Montana, and finally ending up in Wyoming.

All during the trip I had the odd sensation of having islands of information in my head, but I couldn't piece them all together. It was overwhelming! As we traveled on, I likened the feeling to quilting in that I not only had pieces to stitch together but layers of time to go through as well. I pictured stitching the top of the quilt to the bottom and connecting it to the layers in between: the history, the personalities, the pivotal moments, not to mention current events such as the Dakota pipeline protests.

This may be a sneaky way of showing you my vacation pictures, but here we go!

Sometime ago I wrote a blog post about sod houses. http://cowboykisses.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-ould-sodhouse.html so when I heard the oldest, intact sod house in existence was on route, I had to see it. We were told it had already closed for the season, but when we got there it was open! The Prairie Homestead sits outside the Badlands of South Dakota. It was a beautiful, sunny day and walking around the homestead, surrounded by fields of grass with the Badlands in the distance, I got some sense of what it would have been like to be one of the early families trying to carve out an existence. When I stepped inside the low, dark house I think what surprised me was how solid it felt. The sod dried like blocks of cement so it wasn't as crumbly or dirty as I imagined, though I shudder to think about spending a cold, rainy day in there.

Inside a sod house, Prairie Homestead, South Dakota

While visiting the Badlands, we stayed in Wall, S.D., home of the famous Wall Drug, which to me previously was just a place where bumper stickers are born. You drive into town and there is billboard after billboard advertising Wall Drug promising free ice water, 5 cent coffee, and if you're on your honeymoon, free donuts. There's not much in Wall besides Wall Drug, which covers almost an entire block, and we were thinking we were not going to be lured into the tourist trap. Well, we actually made two trips there before we left, because it was fun! The stores within one big store were  a blast. We did get free ice water.

Delighted to find free ice water in South Dakota

But somehow along the way to get the free ice water, our baskets got filled with shot glasses, salt and pepper shakers, and playing cards--basically anything with a jackalope printed on it (kids, it's going to be a jackalope themed Xmas this year). My husband even left with a lariat coiled around his shoulder. Typically, we don't have to rustle cattle in the suburbs of Chicago, but the longer the time spent in Wall Drug, the more he needed a lariat. I was excited to find so many items of western wear I'd written about. There were western wear shirts with snaps and yokes and even the shield fronted shirt. And walls and walls of cowboy boots and hats. http://cowboykisses.blogspot.com/2017/09/dress-like-cowboy.html?spref=pi

shield or bib front western shirt at Wall Drug

Next we headed up to Deadwood. The image of Wild Bill Hickok is plastered everywhere.

Wall O'Bill

 You'd think he founded the town. In reality, he was shot and killed on his one and only visit to Deadwood--where he'd only been about two weeks. To add insult to injury, the man has to spend eternity in boot hill next to Calamity Jane, who had a crush on the recently married Bill and requested she be buried next to him. Some reports say he barely knew her and found the whole thing embarrassing.

Mount Moriah Cemetery, Deadwood, S.D. Buffalo Bill wasn't in Deadwood a hot minute before he was shot in the back. Now he is forever associated with the town and doomed to spend eternity next to Calamity Jane.

But one person Wild Bill did know was Buffalo Bill Cody. He even performed in the latter Bill's Wild West Show. http://cowboykisses.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-wild-west-show-shaping-legend.html?spref=pi

Next, on to a place that has acted as a siren call for me for as long as I can remember: Little Bighorn Battlefield. Let me just say it did not disappoint. We spent all day there and it warrants a post all to itself, so I won't go into it too much here. I did a piece for this blog on the evolution of the place over time from a battlefield to a monument and the changes along the way. http://cowboykisses.blogspot.com/2017/08/little-bighorn-national-monument.html?spref=pi

Where they fell 

We left Montana and headed down to Wyoming. First stop Cody! There we meandered the boardwalks of Old Trail Town where buildings of historic note have been moved like the cabin of Jeremiah Johnson and the saloon the Hole in the Wall Gang hung out complete with bullet holes in the swinging doors. When I wrote Margarita and the Hired Gun, I set part of the story in an outlaw hideout, so I was especially excited to see the actual cabin Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid lived while hiding out in Hole in the Wall. A number of impenetrable hideouts were spaced along the Outlaw Trail, Hole in the Wall being one of them. http://sweetheartsofthewest.blogspot.com/2016/04/outlaw-hideouts-and-book-giveaway-by.html (note the book giveaway mentioned in the blog is no longer running).

Old Trail Town, Cody, WY

For me, on this trip the main course was Little Bighorn Battlefield. All stops leading up to that day were appetizers. Now time for dessert! We drove through Yellowstone (in a blizzard) and went to visit fellow author Andrea Downing in Jackson Hole and the Grand Tetons! It was so much fun to meet Andi in person. She, in fact, mapped out the route of our journey for us. 

Two authors cutting up under the antlers

It wasn't all fun and games in Jackson Hole. Andi and I were able to finalize a joint project. We re-released our stories that were in the anthology The Good, the Bad, and the Ghostly under the title From the Files of Nat Tremayne: Two Tales of Hauntings in the Old West. The eight stories in the original anthology were all connected by a detective agency specializing in paranormal events. It was a fun project to work on, and I'm happy to see our work live again. This week the book is on sale for $0.99. Get it. It's a good one: spooky, funny, and above all--romantic.

https://www.amazon.com/Files-Nat-Tremayne-Tales-Hauntings-ebook/dp/B0767HWT6S/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

All images courtesy of  me!

Deadwoods Ghosts by Paty Jager

Have you ever experienced a ghost? Thought you might have seen one? Or even felt that cold whisper of air or the feeling you weren't alone?

Fairmont Hotel

Last month I attended the Wild Deadwood Reads Reader/Author event in Deadwood, South Dakota. You can read more about it here. It was a fun-filled weekend of sightseeing and attending events with readers. While I enjoyed the bus ride and games up to the 1880's train ride and the train itself was a unique peek into how characters set in my historical books would have ridden the rails; and I had fun watching the crowd and the bull riders at the PBR rodeo; I would have to say my favorite event of the weekend was our ghost tour through The Historic Fairmont Hotel Brothel.

To start with, the man giving the tour was a showman. He had us all sit at a long table in a room with memorabilia covering the walls and told us stories of the brothels, the clientele, and the woman who lived in the building.

There were three buildings on the block that were all connected on the second floors. This floor and
the third floor were the brothels. Men would enter the barber shop in the basement as if getting a shave and a haircut, exit the back, and take a back staircase to the second floor. There they were led into a "meeting" room. Here they visited with the ladies and made their choice if they didn't already have one in mind.

On the second floor, they could also move from one brothel to the next if they preferred a woman who worked for a different place.

The sad thing about these poor woman was that drinking, drugs, and getting involved with the wrong man usually ended up with them dead- either by someone else or their own doing.

The owner of the hotel told a story of how he purchased the hotel, and because he had no where else

Are those ghosts in the upper left corner?

to live, and was slowly renovating, he  lived in the big three story building all by himself for several years. He had incidents where he would wake because it felt like someone was pulling his arm, or someone had sat on his bed. Others who visited and slept on the bed had similar occurrences. He also saw a woman named Maggie several times. She had fallen in with the wrong man, discovered she was pregnant and he was married. She sat on the window ledge and pushed- killing herself and the baby. In the photos he took of her, you see her extended belly. He has one photo where his sister was in the room talking about the man, who was a prominent citizen in the day in Deadwood, and you see ghostly hands around his sister's throat. Were the photos doctored? Or does Maggie's ghost haunt the building?

I didn't see Maggie, but in one of my photos there is a shadow that doesn't fit anyone who was in the room and a flash of light in another.

shadow is looking through the door.

The way the man told stories and prepared our minds to "see" things that may or may not have been there was a definite art. Some walked around saying they could feel something in that corner or they saw the boy the man talked about in one hall. Did they? Or are they more susceptible to ideas put in their heads?

I do believe in ghosts. I've had two encounters in my life that can't be explained any other way. And I do believe there are ghosts who have not left this plane due to circumstances they can't control.

But did I see ghosts or was I as gullible as the rest of the people who paid money to walk through a dark building? ;) Join us in Deadwood next June and you can see if there really are ghosts.

Paty Jager is an award-winning author of 32+ novels, a dozen novellas, and a passel of short stories of murder mystery, western romance, and action adventure. All her work has Western or Native American elements in them along with hints of humor and engaging characters.

This is what readers have to say about the Letters of Fate series- “...filled with romance, adventure and twists and turns.” “What a refreshing and well written love story of fate and hope!”


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