Getting the Bug

Making History

I never liked studying history when I was in school. Ironically (or fatefully?), the college scholarship I was awarded required that I take one history class every semester and pass it or I would lose the money (and my college tuition). Like a good soldier, I chose a history course every semester, and grumbled about it. Sometimes I passed it by the skin of my teeth because I really didn't like reading the books, writing the essays, and memorizing those dates. The only portion of history I actually found interesting was the Civil War and that was only because I loved "Gone with the Wind."

As the years passed and I became a novelist, I wrote contemporary stories until the fateful day when I read a LaVyrle Spencer novel and was entranced. It was an historical. After reading several more Spencer books and getting encouragement from my agent, I embarked on researching and writing my first historical romance.

Folks, I was hooked!

To this day, I love writing historical romances and -- gulp! -- I love researching them! I have not only become engrossed in history, I have stumbled onto undiscovered countries in myself. I discovered that I knew a lot about farming, ranching, and cowboys, but where did I get this information that came pouring out of me? I'm a city kid!

Finally, I realized that those many, many hours of sitting before a TV watching westerns with my family had served me well. Listening to my mother and father recall their childhood on Missouri cotton farms had seeped into me, too.

I now believe that, for most of us, we must begin making history before we can actually appreciate it. Once I was in my 30s, the past was no longer boring because I actually had one! When I hit my 40s, I started wondering about my ancestors and began researching to fill in my family tree.

Now I have to make myself STOP researching and START writing a novel. Just when I think, I've finished researching, I find something else that's fascinating. It becomes a chore as to what to put in a novel and what to leave out!

I'm glad history finally beat me into submission. I am now a devoted student of it and I'm happy to pass on what I learn in my novels.

Knowing the history helps the story by Paty Jager

I’ve been interested in history, specifically the Pacific Northwest where I grew up and continue to live. If you’ve read my books, you know I like to write about this area and its history. I hope that with each book I write I sneak in a fact or two about either how people lived ( if it’s historical) or about a place or culture. I don’t pull things out of the air and put them in my books.

Well, okay, there is a lot of fiction in my fiction, but, I don’t make up cultures and tribes. I had one person leave a review saying I didn’t know what I was talking about, there wasn’t a tribe called the Cayuse.

I stared and stared at that review. All they had to do was google or look it up in an encyclopedia. Granted now there are no true pure blood Cayuse tribal members. But they were a tribe who lived in SE Washington and NE Oregon. I have a book titled: The Cayuse Indians; Imperial Tribesmen of Old Oregon by Robert H. Ruby and John A. Brown.

They were a small and insular group. That was one of the things that caused their language to nearly become extinct. They spoke it only among themselves. They didn’t use it publicly. They were a unique tribe who only spoke their language and remained together in their territory. The area they claimed as their home held all they needed to sustain them. They were nomadic traveling from the Blue Mountains to the foot of Mt. Hood and north to the plains of SE Washington, staying within the boundaries of the heads of the Grande Ronde, Umatilla, and Walla Walla Rivers and the Deschutes River in Oregon and Washington

But because they remained close, when a disease hit, it would wipe out whole families and villages. With this happening they had to allow men and women to marry outside of the tribe. With their marrying into the neighboring Nez Perce and Walla Walla tribes, they slowly began to speak those languages. The Cayuse language slowly died each time an elder passed.

Their neighbor tribes were the Walla Walla and the Nez Perce. These tribes were all well known for their horse breeding and horsemanship. In the 1840s, the European settlers following the Oregon trail arrived in their territory. While they were curious and allowed Walt Whitman to establish a mission in their territory, when the white people brought measles which killed many of the Cayuse, they retaliated by killing and kidnapping settlers. This only brought the soldiers and more trouble which landed them on the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Reservation with members of the Walla Walla and the Umatilla tribes.

It is believed there is no longer a 100% Cayuse tribal member, but they are a rare and strong group of individuals that have grown and become prosperous on the Umatilla Reservation. I have been subscribed to the CUJ- Confederated Umatilla Journal- the newspaper printed on the reservation for several years. I enjoy reading about the business and social happenings along with the school information. They have a wonderful cultural center that I have visited multiple times.

My main character in the Gabriel Hawke Novels, is from this reservation and his mother still lives there. My 50th published book, Stolen Butterfly, book 7 in the Gabreil Hawke Novels is set on the reservation. It was written to bring more noticed to the MMIW organization. (You are the first to see this cover)

And now this reservation is the location of my new Spotted Pony Casino Mysteries. There is an Indian Casino on the reservation but I made up my own casino so I can have murders and events happen there that wouldn’t actually happen at the real casino. And I didn’t have to adhere to how one is run. 😉

This is my rebuttal to the reviewer who said, there isn’t a tribe called Cayuse. Google it!

I wanted to let you know that in May my 50^th book will be published or at least on pre-order. Because of that, I’m having a 50Book Bash! all month long on Facebook. Here’s the link if you want to sign up to say you're coming and get a reminder of the event. It will be a month of fun and chances to win prizes. I’m giving away prizes every day to people who comment.

Paty Jager is an award-winning author of 50 novels, 8 novellas, and numerous anthologies of murder mystery and western romance. All her work has Western or Native American elements in them along with hints of humor and engaging characters. Paty and her husband raise alfalfa hay in rural eastern Oregon. Riding horses and battling rattlesnakes, she not only writes the western lifestyle, she lives it. This is what Books a Plenty Book Reviews has to say about the Gabriel Hawke series: "The blend of nature tracking, clues, and the animals makes for a fascinating mystery that is hard to put down." 

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TALKING WITH THE DEAD - PHOTOGRAPHS

Post by Doris McCaw

writing as Angela Raines

I recently came across the phrase 'talking with the dead'. Initially, I thought it sounded rather morbid until I thought about what it was really about. To me, it's connecting with the past in ways we might not think about. This also follows an earlier post about what inspires your stories. For those who would like to take a look at that post, here is the link: What Inspires Your Stories

But on to the focus of this post: Photographs

I know many of us have looked at pictures, we may even have some favorites of family and friends that bring back memories of an earlier time in our lives. But what of those who had their photos taken back in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century? What can we clean from those? What do they tell us? It is this that allows us to talk with those people from so long ago.

Take this photo: 

This young lady appears confident. Not the semi-smile on her face. While you can see more detail in the original, she is someone you feel you could depend on. Perhaps a good friend who keeps your secrets safe.

How about this gentleman? He looks like the kind of man who wanted to be someone's husband, a good provider. He is handsome, and the smile on his face mirrors the one of the woman above.

I give you two more photos. What do you think they are saying? What were they like? What were their hopes and dreams? I would love to know how they are speaking to you.

There are many ways that those of us who write historical fiction get inspiration. Sometimes it seems when we research we are allowing those who lived in the time we write about speak to us. I haunt antique stores and search out photographs such as these. They help me to understand and when I 'listen' I feel my stories have some truth to what may have happened.

So the next time you see an old photograph, think about what the subject of the photo is saying to you. Until next time, happy writing. Oh, and as a side note, the first photograph and a bit of the second woman are how I picture my heroine in my current WIP about a woman doctor. Here is a short excerpt from that work.

Except for the initial struggle as they were undressing him, the man remained quiet until Pauline moved him on his side. As she began to roll him over he moaned, expelling a loud breath. A deep knife cut ran across his left side from mid-back to just about three inches in the front. There was also a bullet crease across his shoulder. Rolling him onto his stomach she located another smaller cut was on his right side, closer to the front under the ribs. Neither were necessarily life-threatening, although both cuts had begun to fester, a pungent odor emanating from both. Moving to check the shoulders she breathed a sigh when she found no additional bullet or knife wounds. Calling over her shoulder Pauline said, "Caleb, bring the kettle from the stove and fill the basin."

Rushing to do as his mother bid, Caleb returned with the hot water and poured it into the enamel bowl on the stand near the table. Pauline watched as her son carried it toward her. “Set it on the stand, then move the water and stand closer”

Continuing her exam, she found two additional cuts, and a stab wound on the left front shoulder. These cuts were also starting to fester. The only wound that seemed to be healing was the bullet crease.

Shaking her head at the plethora of wounds and healed scars, Pauline continued looking at the man as he lay quiet. She studied the taut stomach muscles, the breadth of the shoulders, and strong arms. She could just hear the gossip about her staring at a semi-naked man. Instead, Pauline was intrigued. Since he was still alive, he must have won the fight. Her question was where and when had it happened? What trick of fate had brought him to her house?

“How long ago did this happen? What happened?” Pauline whispered, knowing the man wouldn’t answer. That he’d lasted as long as he had was a miracle and a testament to strength, both physical and mental.

Doris Gardner-McCraw -

Author, Speaker, Historian-specializing in
Colorado and Women's History

Angela Raines - author: Telling Stories Where Love & History Meet

Books: Angela Raines Books

Website: Angela Raines - author

Angela Raines FaceBook: Click Here

Tracking is an Art by Paty Jager

When I go on walks, I am constantly scanning the ground, watching for rattlesnakes. The benefit of that is I get to see all kinds of tracks in the dirt. Tiny, tiny dots that are prints from an insect, a squiggle whose width tells me how big a snake has crossed my path, the crutch of a bird's track, and the clawless print of a bobcat or lynx.

I enjoy seeing it all, seeing which direction they headed and thinking about where they are going and why.

It wasn't until I decided to make one of my characters a tracker that I purchased two books on tracking by Tom Brown, Jr. Reading the books has been fun! I bought them for research and have used much of the useful information when my character Gabriel Hawke is tracking a person.

What I love the most about the books and the author is the fact he was taught to track by "Grandfather" an Apache elder. This also works well for my character who is Nez Perce and Cayuse two American Indian tribes of Oregon. In my character's background I have that he was taught by his Nez Perce grandfather to follow the animal tracks and learn the ways to be scan an area and know where to find animals and in the case of Hawke following people, where a person might try to hide or look for water.

The most fascinating thing I discovered while reading the book and practicing making marks in the sand to see how you could tell which way a person or animal looked, is while I have a knack for seeing tracks and wondering, I don't have the patience to really be a tracker. I like finding and thinking about or making a story up in my head, but I don't want to get down on my hands and knees and really look at what may or may not have happened.

See the snake trail?

However, my character is focused and he does take the time and slowly piece together every morsel of evidence he can find.

There is so much that can be told by looking at a print. There are pressure points- seeing which way a person is looking; if they are carrying extra weight; injured; or how fast they are moving by the direction of moved dirt or debris.  Then there is the telling of how old the print is. That is the hardest for me to figure out and after reading how the tracker, Tom Brown Jr. learned to tell, I know I'll never be able to learn. Other than it's fresh, it's old. That's it.

He and his friend, the grandson of the elder Apache, would watch an animal make a print and then go look at the print every hour for twenty-four hours to learn what it looked like after so many hours. That is due diligence- something I don't have!

And not only did you need to see the track each hour but you also had to learn how long depending on what the animal/person walked through. Because, grass will spring up as will some plants, while others will break. There is mud - different types which act differently; dirt - same as mud; sand again different types will act differently. dry grass, straw, bark,leaves. It all reacts differently over time.

tracks I made on the beach to see details in direction

Tracking isn't always about what you see.Sometimes it's about what you don't see. There was a discussion in the book about how when trying to track across rock you don't look for something left by the shoe, but something that is displaced by the shoe. The author told about trying to track an ant across a rock. Just tracking an ant is a feat in itself in my mind! But he said, that by getting down on his hands and knees and looking across the rock, he could see where the ant had crawled by the tiny spots of dirt missing in a path across the rock.  That's good eyes!  Luckily my character doesn't track anything as small as an ant!

I love knowing all of this an having read this man's books on tracking. It helps me feel like I give my character a real basis for the things he does in the book not only while tracking in the wilderness but also when he is following leads to find the murderers.

If you like mystery novels that deal with the outdoors, horses, mules, and dogs, you might like my Gabriel Hawke series. There isn't a romance, but there is a budding male/female friendship that may end up in romance....

Paty Jager is an award-winning author of 42 novels, 8 novellas, and numerous anthologies of murder mystery and western romance. All her work has Western or Native American elements in them along with hints of humor and engaging characters. Paty and her husband raise alfalfa hay in rural eastern Oregon. Riding horses and battling rattlesnakes, she not only writes the western lifestyle, she lives it.

blog / website /  Facebook / Paty's Posse / Goodreads / Twitter / Pinterest   / Bookbub

Learning Admiration for the Crow Indians by Paty Jager

I've never been one to let one perspective influence how I made decisions or what I thought.  I like to learn all I can about something before I make judgement. But I'll have to say, all the research I did on the Nez Perce and Blackfoot Indian tribes to this point had me thinking bad things about the Crow.

Now as I delve into the history and information about the Crow, I understand why they were scouts for the Army against the other tribes. And I understand why the other tribes disrespected them for it.

My latest work in progress has a Crow hero. I could have picked Blackfoot or Cheyenne, but for some reason my mind kept circling to Crow. And I'm glad it did.

I started researching and learning about the Nez Perce and the Blackfoot Indians years ago when I came up with my historical Native American Spirit Trilogy set among the Nez Perce. They had battles with the Blackfoot and I understood their battles and their desire to stop battling this enemy. And as I wrote book three in the trilogy where the U.S. Army was chasing the Nez Perce and Crow scouts were helping the army to find the band that had warred with them, I thought, as did the Nez Perce, that it was unthinkable for one tribe of Indians to help the army.

Fast forward to the last couple of months. I've been researching for my hero in my upcoming Silver Dollar Saloon book: Freedom. Reading books like From the Heart of the Crow Country: The Crows Own Stories by Joseph Medicine Crow and Plenty-coups Chief of the Crows by Frank B. Linderman I'm understanding why they were helpful to the whites and how the government, as they had every chance they could, reneged on their promises.

As a researcher of several Native American tribes, I've found the same significance in dreams/visions in all the tribes. Each one has their own type of "vision quest" and how the dream is interpreted- as in whether they keep it to themselves, sing it to the whole band, or only tell the medicine men and elders who help them interpret the vision.

The Crow had several of their notable clansmen who had similar dreams about the Whites coming. Where the Crow had once been many in number and strong. Their being pushed westward and warring with other tribes being pushed westward along with the tribes they were encroaching on, their numbers were small in comparison to the tribes around them.

They raided the other tribes and stole horses as well as counted coups which was stealing a horse tied to an enemy's tipi, or touching them in battle without killing or getting harmed oneself. The more coups they accumulated helped them to become chiefs.They weren't blood-thirsty like some tribes. They were more passive like the Nez Perce, only battling when they had no other choice. Because in battles you lost warriors, and their numbers were small.

Being one of the smaller tribes and having been told of visions of the Whites who were coming,

Crow Scout

killing their food supplies, and taking land, they made friends with the first whites to come to their country. A treaty of friendship was signed in 1825 between the United States and the Crow tribe. When forts were built on their hunting grounds, they made friends with the army to keep their land. The first treaty in 1851 called the Fort Laramie Treaty gave them 35,531, 147 acres. It was all the land they had roamed for centuries. Then in 1868 when ranchers decided it was good grazing land, a new treaty reduced the land to 8,000,400 acres. 

When the army started hunting down bands of Cheyenne, Arapaho, Sioux, and eventually the Nez Perce, the Crow offered warriors as scouts with an agreement they would not lose anymore land, would be compensated for the land that had already been taken, and their people would receive food.

In 1882 after the surrounding tribes had been detained by the army, their land was further reduced until by 1890 they were left with 2.5 million acres of land on the eastern edge of their territory. The only consultation... they were one of the few tribes given land that was once their hunting grounds.

The Crow are not a backstabbing tribe as I had thought all those years ago, they are a pragmatic tribe who saw siding with the U.S. Government as a way to save their people. They managed to save more of their culture and language than other tribes.

Oh, and those dreams I mentioned before...they told of the white man coming, the buffalo disappearing, the spotted buffalo or cattle coming, and a chickadee represented that they listen. Learn  how other tribes lost to the white man and learn how to escape such a defeat for their tribe.

My take-away from this? I will never make an assumption about anyone until I have done my research. 

###

Paty Jager is an award-winning author of 39 novels, 6 novellas, and numerous anthologies of murder mystery and western romance. All her work has Western or Native American elements in them along with hints of humor and engaging characters. Paty and her husband raise alfalfa hay in rural eastern Oregon. Riding horses and battling rattlesnakes, she not only writes the western lifestyle, she lives it.

blog / website /  Facebook / Paty's Posse / Goodreads / Twitter / Pinterest / Bookbub

photo source: Deposit photos and Wikipedia

The Mighty Can Opener! by Patti Sherry-Crews

A brief history of the can opener might not be the sexiest topic for a blog post, but stopping what I'm doing to ask myself questions such as "how did people in the old west get their food out of the can?", and then having to find the answer is part of the writing process.

When I sit down to craft a story I probably spend as much time researching as I do writing--if not more. Especially if I'm working on an historical novel. I start a line of dialog and then wonder if a certain word or phrase was in use at the time, so I have to open a new tab on my laptop to look up the etymology of said word or phrase.

Ditto, dropping in historically accurate details requires research. The minutiae of my characters' lives is what brings depth and texture to the story. They don't just sit down to eat, they have to eat something and it better be something available during that time period. For instance, a medieval knight in England would not sit down to a plate of roast potatoes because potatoes were one of the foods brought from the New World centuries after Sir Hubert sat down to eat his dinner in the 12th century.

So, I spend a good amount of time looking up details about clothing, food, medicine, etc.

When I wrote my first historical western, Margarita and the Hired Gun, the two main characters spend most of the book out on the trail--for weeks on horseback. They had to eat, and though they did live off the land to some extent, they mainly had to rely on food they carried with them. This presented a problem for me because how would they keep food from spoiling on their long journey?
In researching this question, I was surprised to find how early canned food became available. It would have been one of the foodstuffs Michael and Margarita carried with them in their saddlebags.

In my current work in progress, I've once again put my characters out on the trail. In one chapter they sit down together to share a can of beans....but, wait....how do they open that can of beans? I never thought about that before. Hero and heroine stare mutely at one another across the campfire holding a can of beans aloft and wondering how to open it. Author, help us out here, their eyes seem to say.
*opens new tab
I quickly looked up when the first can opener was made to see what this thing would look like. In 1858, Ezra J. Warner designed the first can opener. Warner's design consisted of a pointed blade with a guard made to puncture the can without going too far into it. Then a second, curved blade would be worked around the top of the can in a sawing motion.

But, pay attention: Peter Durand got a patent from King George III for his canned food process in 1810. Notice that? Canned food was out there 50 years before anyone could figure out how to get the food out of the can!

That's like building a garage around a car before envisioning the need for a door the width of a car. So how did folks open a can of peaches before 1858?

 Briefly, let's look at canned food, the need for which was a by-product of war. Needing to move troops great distances for long periods of time, Napoleon offered a reward to anyone who could solve the problem of feeding an army on the move. In 1809 Nicolas Appert first preserved foods by putting them in hermetically sealed and heat sterilized containers. Unfortunately these early containers were made of glass, which is not the ideal for rough travel.

The first cans (short for "canisters") made by Durand were of wrought iron with a tin lining. In order to open them, the use of a chisel and hammer was recommended. As you can imagine canned food did not immediately take off with the speed of sliced bread. 

Then came the American Civil War and canned foods once again kept moving armies fed. Canned foods like oysters, meats, fruit, vegetables made their way to the general stores at this time. 

But early can openers were not user-friendly. The threat from the sharp blade and the jagged edges left on the open can was off-putting, so store clerks would perform the service of opening cans for their customers.

When I read that canned foods existed for such a long time before anyone came up with a good solution to get at their contents, I thought, "Talk about putting the cart before the horse!" 

*opens new tab

(To put the cart before the horse means to do something out of order, to have the wrong priorities, to prioritize inconsequential things over important things. The figurative use of this phrase in English dates back to the 1500s, but the Roman politician and philosopher Cicero used the term in his essay called On Friendship: “We put the cart before the horse, and shut the stable door when the steed is stolen, in defiance of the old proverb.” Interestingly, Cicero refers to put the cart before the horse as an old proverb, suggesting that the figure of speech was well known before his own time. Related phrases are puts the cart before the horse, putting the cart before the horse as well as the negative admonition don’t put the cart before the horse.--Grammarist)

Now, back to our campfire dinner: The hero holds up a can of beans and scratches his head. The heroine lets out a throaty laugh and pulls a Warner can opener out of thin air. Both turn toward the author and convey gratitude with their eyes.

While you're waiting for me to finish this story, you can read a copy of Margarita and the Hired Gun, which is available as a single or you can find it in the collection, Under a Western Sky, six full length historical western romances at the bargain price of $0.99.

Available on Amazon

Available on Amazon

Authors, have you come across any interesting facts while doing research? How much time do you spend researching vs writing? Do you have an go-to places to search out your facts? Readers, do anachronism stop you dead in your tracks while into a book?