“If they’re hungry, let them eat grass”
When you think of the savagery of the Old West, Minnesota doesn’t leap to mind. Montana, yes; South Dakota, yes; Arizona, yes, but not a Midwestern state that sits on the eastern edge of the West. Yet, Minnesota played a pivotal role in the bloody conflict between...
Did Brigham Young Order a Massacre?
On September 11, 1857, 120 men, women and children—pioneers from Arkansas headed for California—were massacred after being promised safe passage through a Southern Utah valley known as Mountain Meadows. They were murdered by a small Mormon militia and its Indian...
Moving Along the Santa Fe Trail
“Far away from my wife and child, and six hundred miles of constant danger in an uninhabited region was not a pleasant prospect for contemplation,” Santa Fe Trail traveler Hezekiah Brake noted in 1858. “But I laughed with the rest, joked about roasting our bacon...
The Long Arm of the Law
Enforcing the law in the early West was a vocation for stout, fearless men. And yet there were at least three who extended the long arm of the law to apprehend malefactors, even after they had only one arm to extend. Virgil Earp was the most famous of the three...
True West March/April 2025
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