Billy the Kid, also known as William Henry McCarty, Henry Antrim and William H. Bonney (Allegedly November 23, 1859 – c. July 14, 1881) was a 19th-century American frontier outlaw and gunman who participated in the Lincoln County War. According to legend, he killed 21 men, but he is generally accepted to have killed between four and nine.
McCarty (or Bonney, the name he used at the height of his notoriety) was 5 feet 8 inches (173 cm) to 5 feet 9 inches (175 cm) tall with blue eyes, a smooth complexion, and prominent front teeth. He was said to be friendly and personable at times, and many recalled that he was as "lithe as a cat". Contemporaries described him as a "neat" dresser who favored an "unadorned Mexican sombrero".These qualities, along with his cunning and celebrated skill with firearms, contributed to his paradoxical image, as both a notorious outlaw and beloved folk hero.
Relatively unknown during most of his lifetime, Bonney was catapulted into legend a few months before his death by New Mexico's governor, Lew Wallace, who placed a price on his head, and by stories printed in the Las Vegas Gazette (Las Vegas, New Mexico) and the New York Sun. Many other newspapers followed suit and published stories about Billy the Kid's exploits. After his death, several biographies were written that portrayed the Kid in varying lights.
Early life
Little is known about McCarty's origins, but some scholars of western history "contend that he was born on the eve of the Civil War in the bowels of an Irish neighborhood in New York City" (at 70 Allen Street). If indeed his birthplace was New York, no records that can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he ever lived there have ever been uncovered". While his biological father remains an obscure figure, some researchers have theorized that his name was Patrick McCarty, Michael McCarty, William McCarty, or Edward McCarty. There is clear evidence that his mother's name was Catherine McCarty, although "there have been continuing debates about whether McCarty was her maiden or married name".According to some accounts, McCarty was born as William Henry McCarty, Jr., but his mother preferred to call him "Henry" because she did not wish him to be known as "Junior". It is believed that McCarty's mother was a survivor of the Great Famine. By 1868, Catherine McCarty had moved with her two young sons, Henry and Joseph, to Indianapolis, Indiana. There, she met William Antrim, who was 12 years her junior. In 1873, after several years of moving around the country, the two were married at the First Presbyterian Church in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and settled further south in Silver City. Antrim found sporadic work as a bartender and carpenter but soon became more interested in prospecting and gambling for fortune than in his wife and stepsons. Nevertheless, young McCarty often used the surname "Antrim" when referring to himself.
Faced with a husband who was frequently absent, McCarty's mother reportedly washed clothes, baked pies, and took in boarders in order to provide for her sons. Although she was fondly remembered by onetime boarders and neighbors as "a jolly Irish lady, full of life and mischief", she was already in the final stages of tuberculosis when the family reached Silver City. The following year, on September 16, 1874, Catherine McCarty died; she was buried in the Memory Lane Cemetery in Silver City. At age 14, McCarty was taken in by a neighboring family who operated a hotel where he worked to pay for his keep. The manager was impressed by the youth, contending that he was the only young man who ever worked for him that did not steal anything. One of McCarty's school teachers later recalled that the young orphan was "no more of a problem than any other boy, always quite willing to help with chores around the schoolhouse". Early biographers sought to explain McCarty's subsequent descent into lawlessness by focusing on his habit of reading dime novels that romanticized crime. A more likely explanation, however, was his slender physique, "which placed him in precarious situations with bigger and stronger boys".
Forced to seek new lodgings when his foster family began to experience "domestic problems", McCarty moved into a boarding house and pursued odd jobs. In April 1875, McCarty was arrested by Grant County Sheriff Harvey Whitehill, after McCarty stole some cheese. On September 24, 1875, McCarty was again arrested when he was found in possession of clothing and firearms that a fellow boarder had stolen from a Chinese laundry owner. Two days after McCarty was placed in jail, the teenager escaped by worming his way up the jailhouse chimney. From that point on, McCarty was more or less a fugitive.According to some accounts, he eventually found work as an itinerant ranch hand and shepherd in southeastern Arizona. In 1876, he settled in the vicinity of Fort Grant Army Post in Arizona, where he worked local ranches and tested his skills at local gaming houses. Sheriff Whitehill would later say that he liked the boy, and his acts of theft were more due to necessity than wantonness.
During this time, McCarty became acquainted with John R. Mackie, a Scottish-born ex-cavalry private with a criminal bent. The two men supposedly became involved in the risky, but profitable, enterprise of horse thievery; and McCarty, who targeted local soldiers, became known by the sobriquet of "Kid Antrim".Biographer Robert M. Utley writes that the nickname arose because of McCarty's "slight build and beardless countenance, his young years, and his appealing personality". In 1877, McCarty was involved in an altercation with the civilian blacksmith at Fort Grant, an Irish immigrant named Frank "Windy" Cahill, who took pleasure in bullying young McCarty. On August 17, Cahill reportedly attacked McCarty after a verbal exchange and threw him to the ground. Reliable accounts suggest McCarty retaliated by drawing his gun and shooting Cahill, who died the next day. The coroner's inquest concluded that McCarty's shooting of Cahill was "criminal and unjustifiable". Some of those who witnessed the incident later claimed that McCarty acted in self-defense. Years later, Louis Abraham, who had known McCarty in Silver City but was not a witness, denied that anyone was killed in this altercation.
In fear of Cahill's friends and associates, McCarty fled Arizona Territory and entered New Mexico Territory. He eventually arrived at the former army post of Apache Tejo, where he joined a band of cattle rustlers who targeted the sprawling herds of cattle magnate John Chisum. During this period, McCarty was spotted by a resident of Silver City, and the teenager's involvement with the notorious gang was mentioned in a local newspaper. It is unclear how long McCarty rode with the gang of rustlers known as the "Jesse Evans Gang", but reliable sources indicate that he soon turned up at Heiskell Jones's house in Pecos Valley, New Mexico. According to this account, Apaches stole McCarty's horse, forcing him to walk many miles to the nearest settlement, which happened to be Jones's home. When he arrived, the young man was supposedly near death, but Mrs. Jones nursed him back to health. The Jones family developed a strong attachment to McCarty and gave him one of their horses. At some point in 1877, McCarty began to refer to himself as "William H. Bonney".
Lincoln County War
In 1877, McCarty (now widely known as William Bonney) moved to Lincoln County, New Mexico, and was first hired by Doc Scurlock and Charlie Bowdre to work in their cheese factory.Through them he met Frank Coe, George Coe and Ab Saunders, three cousins who owned their own ranch near to the ranch of Richard Brewer. After a short stint working on the ranch of Henry Hooker, McCarty began working on the Coe-Saunders ranch.
Late in 1877, McCarty, along with Brewer, Bowdre, Scurlock, the Coes and the Saunders, was hired as a cattle guard by John Tunstall, an English cattle rancher, banker and merchant, and his partner, Alexander McSween, a prominent lawyer. A conflict known today as the Lincoln County War had erupted between the established town merchants, Lawrence Murphy and James Dolan, and competing business interests headed by Tunstall and McSween. Events turned bloody on February 18, 1878, when Tunstall was spotted while driving a herd of nine horses towards Lincoln and murdered by William Morton, Jessie Evans, Tom Hill, and Frank Baker — all members of the Murphy-Dolan faction, and members of a posse sent to attack McSween's holdings.After murdering Tunstall, the gunmen shot down his prized bay horse. "As a wry and macabre joke on Tunstall's great affection for horses, the dead bay's head was then pillowed on his hat", writes Frederick Nolan, Tunstall's biographer. Although members of the Murphy-Dolan faction sought to frame Tunstall's death as a "justifiable homicide", evidence at the scene suggested that Tunstall attempted to avoid a confrontation before he was shot down. Tunstall's murder enraged McCarty and the other ranch hands.
McSween, who abhorred violence, took steps to punish Tunstall's murderers through legal means; he obtained warrants for their arrests from the local justice of the peace John B. Wilson. Tunstall's men formed their own group called the Regulators. After being deputized by Brewer, Tunstall's foreman, who had been appointed a special constable and given the warrant to arrest Tunstall's killers, they proceeded to the Murphy-Dolan store. The wanted men, Bill Morton and Frank Baker, attempted to flee, but they were captured on March 6. Upon returning to Lincoln, the Regulators reported that Morton and Baker had been shot on March 9 near Agua Negra during an alleged escape attempt. During their journey to Lincoln, the Regulators also killed one of their own members, a man named McCloskey, whom they suspected of being a traitor. On the very day that McCloskey, Morton, and Baker were slain, Governor Samuel Beach Axtell arrived in Lincoln County to investigate the ongoing violence. The governor, accompanied by James Dolan and associate John Riley, proved hostile to the faction now headed by McSween. Thus, the Regulators "went from lawmen to outlaws". Notably, Axtell refused to acknowledge the existence of the so-called "Santa Fe Ring", a group of corrupt politicians and business leaders led by U.S. Attorney Thomas Benton Catron. Catron cooperated closely with the Murphy-Dolan faction, which was perceived as part of the notorious "ring".
Unfazed, the Regulators planned to settle a score with Sheriff William J. Brady, who had arrested McCarty and fellow deputy Fred Waite in the aftermath of Tunstall's murder. At the time Brady arrested them, the two men were attempting to serve a warrant on Brady for his suspected role in looting Tunstall's store after the Englishman's death, as well as his posse members for the murder of Tunstall. On April 1, Regulators Jim French, Frank McNab, John Middleton, Fred Waite, Henry Brown and McCarty ambushed Sheriff Brady and his deputy, George W. Hindman, killing them both in Lincoln's main street. McCarty was shot in the thigh while attempting to retrieve a rifle that Brady had seized from him during an earlier arrest. With this move, the McSween faction disillusioned many former supporters, who came to view both sides as "equally nefarious and bloodthirsty".
The connection between McSween and the Regulators was ambiguous, however. McCarty was loyal to the memory of Tunstall, though not necessarily to McSween. There is some doubt as to whether McCarty and McSween were even acquainted at the time of Brady's death.According to a contemporary newspaper account, the Regulators disclaimed "all connection or sympathy with McSween and his affairs" and expressed their sole desire to track down Tunstall's murderers.
On April 4, in what became known as the Gunfight of Blazer's Mills, the Regulators sought the arrest of an old buffalo hunter known as Buckshot Roberts, whom they suspected of involvement in the Tunstall slaying. Roberts refused to be taken alive, even after he suffered a severe bullet wound to the chest. During the gun battle that ensued, Roberts shot and killed the Regulators' leader, Dick Brewer.Four other Regulators were wounded in the skirmish. The incident had the effect of further alienating the public, given that many local residents "admired the way Roberts put up a gutsy fight against overwhelming odds".
Escape from Lincoln
McCarty was transported from Fort Sumner to Las Vegas, where he gave an interview to a reporter from the Las Vegas Gazette. Next, the prisoner was transferred to Santa Fe, where he sent four separate letters over the next three months to Governor Wallace seeking clemency. Wallace, however, refused to intervene, and the Kid's trial was held in April 1881 in Mesilla. On April 9, after two days of testimony, McCarty was found guilty of the murder of Sheriff Brady, the only conviction ever secured against any of the combatants in the Lincoln County War. On April 13, he was sentenced by Judge Warren Bristol to hang.
With his execution scheduled for May 13, McCarty was removed to Lincoln, where he was held under guard by two of Garrett's deputies, James Bell and Robert Ollinger, on the top floor of the town courthouse. On April 28, while Garrett was out of town, McCarty stunned the territory by killing both of his guards and escaping. The details of the escape are unclear. Some researchers believe that a sympathizer placed a pistol in a nearby privy that McCarty was permitted to use, under escort, each day. McCarty retrieved the gun, and turned it on Bell when the pair had reached the top of a flight of stairs in the courthouse. Another theory holds that McCarty slipped off his manacles at the top of the stairs, struck Bell over the head with them, grabbed Bell's own gun, and shot him with it.
Bell staggered into the street and collapsed, mortally wounded. McCarty scooped up Ollinger's 10-gauge double-barrel shotgun. Both barrels had been fully loaded with buckshot earlier by Ollinger himself. The kid waited at the upstairs window for his second guard, who had been across the street with some other prisoners, to respond to the gunshot and come to Bell's aid. As Ollinger came running into view, McCarty leveled the shotgun at him, called out "Hello Bob!" and killed him. The Kid's escape was delayed for an hour while he worked free of his leg irons with a pickax and then the young outlaw mounted a horse and rode out of town, reportedly singing. The horse returned two days later.
Death
Sheriff Pat Garrett offered that he responded to rumors that McCarty was lurking in the vicinity of Fort Sumner almost three months after his escape. Garrett and two deputies set out on July 14, 1881, to question one of the town's residents, a friend of McCarty's named Pete Maxwell (son of land baron Lucien Maxwell). Close to midnight, as Garrett and Maxwell sat talking in Maxwell's darkened bedroom, McCarty unexpectedly entered the room.
There are at least two versions of what happened next. One version suggests that as the Kid entered, he failed to recognize Garrett in the poor light. McCarty drew his pistol and backed away, asking "¿Quién es? ¿Quién es?" (Spanish for "Who is it? Who is it?"). Recognizing McCarty's voice, Garrett drew his own pistol and fired twice, the first bullet striking McCarty in the chest just above his heart, killing him. In a second version, McCarty entered carrying a knife, evidently headed to a kitchen area. He noticed someone in the darkness, and uttered the words, "¿Quién es? ¿Quién es?" at which point he was shot and killed in ambush style. Although the popularity of the first story persists, and portrays Garrett in a better light, some historians contend that the second version is probably the accurate one. A markedly different theory, in which Garrett and his posse set a trap for McCarty, has also been suggested. Most recently explored in the 2004 Discovery Channel documentary, Billy the Kid: Unmasked, this theory contends that Garrett went to the bedroom of Pedro Maxwell's sister, Paulita, and bound and gagged her in her bed. When McCarty arrived, Garrett was waiting behind Paulita's bed and shot the Kid.
According to Garrett, McCarty was buried the next day in Fort Sumner's old military cemetery, between his fallen companions Tom O'Folliard and Charlie Bowdre. A single tombstone was later erected over the graves, giving the three outlaws' names (Billy's as "William H. Bonney") and with a one word epitaph of "Pals" also carved into it. The tombstone has been stolen and recovered three times since it was set in place in the 1940s, and the entire gravesite is now enclosed within a steel cage.
In his book, Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life, Robert Utley told the story of Pat Garrett's book effort. In the weeks following Garrett's execution of the Kid, he felt the need to tell his side of the story. Many people had begun to talk about the unfairness of the encounter, so Garrett called upon his friend, Marshall Ashmun Upson, to ghost-write a book with him. Ash Upson was a roving journalist who had a gift for graphic prose. Their collaboration led to a book entitled The Authentic Life of Billy the Kid, which was first published in 1882. The book never sold many copies; however, it eventually proved to be an important reference for historians who would later write about the Kid's life.
Posthumous pardon for Billy the Kid
In 2010, the governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson, considered a posthumous pardon for McCarty, who had been convicted for killing Sheriff William Brady. The pardon was considered to be a follow-through on a purported promise made by then Governor Lew Wallace in 1879. On December 31, 2010, on the last day of his term in office, Bill Richardson announced on Good Morning America his decision not to pardon McCarty. He cited "historical ambiguity" surrounding the conditions of Lew Wallace's pardon.
Selected references in popular culture
Billy the Kid has been the subject and inspiration for many popular works, including:
Literature
Billy The Kid (1958), a serial poem by Jack Spicer.
Billy the Kid was published in 1962 as an episode in the ongoing adventures of Lucky Luke by Goscinny and Morris.
The Collected Works of Billy the Kid: Left-handed Poems, by Michael Ondaatje, 1970 Governor General's Award-winning biography in the form of experimental poetry.
Added as an immortal to Michael Scott's series Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel during the third book The Sorceress.
The Illegal Rebirth of Billy the Kid is a science fiction novel by Rebecca Ore, published in 1991.
Anything for Billy is a 1988 novel by Larry McMurtry.
Lucky Billy: a novel about Billy the Kid is a 2008 novel by John Vernon, a professor at Binghamton University.
Film
Billy the Kid, 1930 widescreen film directed by King Vidor and starring Johnny Mack Brown as Billy and Wallace Beery as Pat Garrett
Billy the Kid Returns, 1938: Roy Rogers plays a dual role, Billy the Kid and his dead-ringer lookalike who shows up after the Kid has been shot by Pat Garrett.
Billy the Kid, 1941 remake of the 1930 film, starring Robert Taylor and Brian Donlevy
Buster Crabbe played Billy the Kid in a serial series during 1942 and 1943. The thirteen films included Blazing Frontier, The Renegade, Cattle Stampede, and Western Cyclone (1943).
The Outlaw, Howard Hughes' 1943 motion picture starring Jack Buetel as Billy and featuring Jane Russell in her breakthrough role as the Kid's fictional love interest
The Kid from Texas (1950, Universal International) film starring Audie Murphy--location of title character's place of origin changed to appeal to Texans and capitalize on Murphy association with that state
The Law vs. Billy the Kid (1954, Columbia Pictures Corporation) starring Scott Brady as the Kid, James Griffith as Pat Garrett, Betta St. John as Nita Maxwell, and Alan Hale, Jr. as Bob Ollinger
The Left Handed Gun, Arthur Penn's 1958 motion picture based on a Gore Vidal teleplay, starring Paul Newman as Billy and John Dehner as Garrett
The Boy from Oklahoma (1954), with Tyler MacDuff in the role of Billy the Kid
One-Eyed Jacks (1961), is the only film directed by Marlon Brando, who also played its lead character, Rio. This story is from an adaptation by Rod Serling of a Charles Neider novelization of Billy the Kid's life, with a later revision among others by Sam Peckinpah.
Billy the Kid vs. Dracula (1966), a film starring John Carradine, which strangely pits McCarty against a vampire. Billy the Kid is portrayed as an almost innocent gunslinger and uses his alias William H. Bonney.
Chisum is a 1970 movie starring John Wayne as John Chisum, which deals with Billy the Kid's involvement in the Lincoln County War. Billy is portrayed by Geoffrey Deuel.
Dirty Little Billy,[136] Stan Dragoti's 1972 film starring Michael J. Pollard
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Sam Peckinpah's 1973 motion picture with Kris Kristofferson as Billy, James Coburn as Pat Garrett, and with a soundtrack by Bob Dylan, who also appears in the movie
Young Guns, Christopher Cain's 1988 motion picture starring Emilio Estevez as Billy and Patrick Wayne, son of John Wayne as Pat Garrett
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, 1989 time travel movie featuring Dan Shor as Billy the Kid
Gore Vidal's Billy the Kid, Gore Vidal's 1989 film starring Val Kilmer as Billy and Duncan Regehr as Pat Garrett
Young Guns II, Geoff Murphy's 1990 motion picture starring Emilio Estevez as Billy and William Petersen as Pat Garrett
Purgatory, Uli Edel's 1999 made-for-TV movie starring Donnie Wahlberg as Deputy Glen/Billy The Kid
Requiem for Billy the Kid, Anne Feinsilber's 2006 motion picture starring Kris Kristofferson.
Birth of a Legend, a 2011 film in two parts based on Frederick Nolan's book The Lincoln County War: A Documentary History directed by Andrew Wilkinson
Music
"Billy the Kid", a folk song in the public domain, was published in John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax's American Ballads and Folksongs, and also their Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads.
"Billy the Kid" folksong sung by Woody Guthrie, recorded by Alan Lomax in 1940 for the Library of Congress (#3412 B2), with a melody Guthrie later used for his song "So Long, it's Been Good to Know You". He also recorded it in 1944 for Moe Asch's Asch/Folkways label (MA67).
Aaron Copland's Billy the Kid, a ballet that premiered in 1938.
Bob Dylan's album Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, soundtrack of the 1973 film by Sam Peckinpah.
Jon Bon Jovi's album Blaze of Glory, used as part of the soundtrack for Young Guns II, and featured the song "Billy Get Your Gun".
Marty Robbins' song "Billy the Kid" from the album Gunfighter Ballads & Trail Songs Volume 3.
Marty Robbins' song "Fastest Gun Around" from the 1963 album Return of the Gunfighter.
Dave Stamey's "The Skies of Lincoln County", which features the deceased Bonney as narrator, answering historical distortions by Pat Garrett.
Ry Cooder recorded the folk song "Billy the Kid", on the album Into The Purple Valley, with his own melody and instrumental. It was also on Ry Cooder Classics Volume II.
Billy Joel's song "The Ballad of Billy the Kid", a historically inaccurate re-telling of Billy the Kid's life, off of his 1973 album Piano Man
American composer Mark Nichols (American Composer/Playwright) wrote a popular score for Michael Ondaatje 1992 play, The Collected Works of Billy the Kid.
The Charlie Daniels Band recorded the song "Billy The Kid" (Daniels, Dean, Wilson) on their 1976 album High Lonesome.
UK rock band Loungetree recorded a song "William Child" on their 2009 album Seasons with inspiration drawn from the name and legend of Billy the Kid.
Country singer Billy Dean co-wrote and recorded a song called "Billy the Kid," which was subsequently a hit single on the country charts in 1992. It has since gone on to become Dean's signature song.
"Las Cruces Jail" is a song by the band Two Gallants about Billy the Kid's imprisonment near Las Cruces, New Mexico.
"Billy the Kid Strikes Back" is a song by ambient/dub producer Ott from his album Blumenkraft.
Indie-rap outfit WHY? uses the tongue-twister "Billy the Kid did what he did and he died" in "Song of the Sad Assassin" on their album Alopecia.
William Bonney is a midwestern emo/screamo band that takes their name from Billy the Kid's alternative name, William H. Bonney.
, 
No comments:
Post a Comment