The real Sam Bass.

The real Sam Bass
Bass is on the left, under the "3."
(Courtesy of Robert G. McCubbin, jr.)

The not-so-real Sam Bass

n "Part One" of the Soapy Smith history pages of the Alias Soapy Smith website, I have been displaying the wrong picture of outlaw Sam Bass for quite a while now. No one mentioned the error to me. I found out after reading Bass and Sam Gang by Rick Miller (1999). I did not publish a Sam Bass photograph in Alias Soapy Smith: The Life and Death of a Scoundrel, so I have no need for any corrections there. 
     I do not personally feel too badly for displaying the wrong photograph as in researching the wrong photo (see "The not-so-real Sam Bass") I found that the photo I mistakenly used is very commonly attributed to Bass, even in published books. However, this does not excuse my error as I passed on the blunder to those who trusted the accuracy of my sites information, and for that I am very sorry.
      Soapy Smith and his cousin, Edwin Bobo Smith, witnessed Texas Ranger Dick Ware shoot at Bass as he and his gang were attempting to escape Round Rock, Texas on July 19, 1878. The story is covered in Alias Soapy Smith, starting on page 30.

 









July 21, 2009

Sam Bass: pages 30-31.

"I'd rather be found wrong and learn the
truth than think I'm right and never know."

— Jeff Smith

OCTOBER 3

1860: Captain Nelson and a company of the 10th Infantry battle with Navaho Indians in the Tunicha Mountains, New Mexico Territory.

1860: Captain Holloway and the 8th Infantry battle around 50 Comanche Indians, killing two and "wounding many" at Chaparita, New Mexico Territory.

1863: President Lincoln declares that the last Thursday of November be recognized as Thanksgiving Day.

1865: Indian Chief Little Hill addresses the U.S. Senate in Washington, D.C. on the conditions of the Winnebago Indians in Nebraska.

1866: Arizona Territorial Governor McCormick reports bad news at the 3rd territorial legislature at Prescott. The territory has a population of 5,526 and no stagecoach line. The Apaches are on the warpath, and during the last year the territory only collected $355 in taxes.

1873: U.S. Army hangs four Modoc Indians for the murder of a Civil War hero General Edward R. S. Canby. [The first steamer Soapy Smith takes to Alaska in 1896 is the Canby, named after the famous  general.]

1878: Charles Earl “Black Bart” Bowles,  robs a Wells Fargo stagecoach, 10 miles outside of Potter Valley, California.

1879: Troops at Milk Creek, Colorado Territory are relieved by a regiment of black cavalrymen led by Captain Francis Dodge.

1879: The newspaper The Nugget begins publication in Tombstone, Arizona Territory.

1880: President Hayes meets with an Indian Chief in Maricopa, Arizona Territory.

1885: Soapy Smith is arrested for assault on a victim of one of his games in Denver, Colorado.

1891: Soapy Smith and 3 of his men attack and destroy the office of the Glasson Detective Agency in Denver, Colorado.

1893: The motor-driven vacuum cleaner is patented by J. S. Thurman.

1894: Soapy Smith officiates as timekeeper during a boxing match in Denver.

1900: Tom Horn shoots and kills Isom Dart, a black cowboy in Routt County, Wyoming, who had been accused of rustling cows.

1901: The Victor Talking Machine Company is incorporated. After a merger with Radio Corporation of America the company becomes RCA-Victor.