More True Tales of Old-Time Kansas

by David Dary

Overview

“Rollicking, adventurous, touching” is how American West magazine described David Dary’s first collection of stories, True Tales of Old-Time Kansas. This sequel, containing forty-one episodes, sagas, and legends from Kansas's vigorous, free-spirited past, shows Dary again at his entertaining best.

More True Tales is filled with engaging stories of outlaws and lawmen, trailride adventures, buried treasures, natural catastrophes, the famous and the obscure. Sometimes romantic and always colorful, these stories touch on the struggles and hardships encountered by the pioneers as they attempted to adjust to life in early Kansas. The tales reflect the pioneering spirit of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in this part of the country—love of freedom and individualism, and a healthy respect for Nature.

In these pages Dary brings to life the excitement and adventure of the Old West: the revenge and vengeance of Bloody Bill Anderson and Dutch Henry, the exploits of bank and train robber Bill Doolen, mayhem in the state’s most violent town. Colorful hermits and trappers, traders and town builders join historical characters such as William Becknell, Father of the Santa Fe Trail—whose expedition turned a two thousand percent profit—and Lizzie Johnson Williams, the first woman to follow the Western Trail. The publisher Horace Greeley described urban life along the Santa Fe Trail: “It takes three log houses to make a city in Kansas, but they begin calling it a city as soon as they have staked out the lots.”

Dary recounts vividly the onslaught of cyclones, tornadoes, floods, droughts, blizzards, grasshopper hordes, and dreaded prairie fires. And he includes a section of amazing tall tales—such fish stories as harnessed catfish pulling boats along the Neosho River.

A generous number of illustrations helps bring the tales to life.

For Dary’s many fans, this new collection provides more of what Ray A. Billington, renowned historian of the Old West, described as “authentic history, delightfully told.” And, as Richard Bartlett, author of Great Surveys of the American West said of the first True Tales volume, “Where else but in the frontier West were such stories really lived?”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780700603299
Publisher:	University Press of Kansas
Publication date:	05/06/1987
Series:	Kansas and the Region Series
Pages:	278
Sales rank:	1,086,961
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Preface

Part I: Over the Trails

-William Becknell, Father of the Santa Fe Trail

-Indian Trails and Isaac McCoy

-Martias Dias’s Escape across Kansas

-Seth M. Hays and Council Grove

-When Horace Greeley Followed Kansas Trails

-Lizzie Johnson Williams, the First Cow Woman to Come up the Trail

Part II: Buried Treasure on the Plains

-Outlaw’s Treasure in Cowley County

-Entangled Legends about Treasure in Ellis County

-The Treasure Legend That Wasn’t

-The Missing Indianola Treasure

-Legends of Treasure in Morton County

-Abram B. Burnett’s Treasure

-Legends about Treasure in Lincoln County

-The Devil’s Den Treasure

-The Mysterious Iron Box in Sedgwick County

Part III: The Lawless and the Lawmen

-Bloody Bill Anderson

-Dutch Henry, Horse Thief

-The Rescue of John Doy

-The Most Violent Town in Kansas

-James M. Daugherty’s Kansas Journey

-Gunfights and Gunfighters

Part IV: The Famous and the Obscure

-The Saga of Lew Cassel, Trapper

-The Jordan Massacre

-John O’Loughlin, Trader and Town Builder

-Hugh Cameron, the Kansas Hermit

-John Baxter and the Town that Was Named for Him

-Eugene Fitch War, “Ironquill”

-Theodore R. Davis’s First Journey across Kansas

Part V: Tornadoes, Floods, Grasshoppers, Blizzards, and Prairie Fires

-When Tornadoes Were Called Cyclones

-Before the Dams Were Built

-When Grasshoppers Ruled the Day

-Some Kansas Blizzards

-Prairie Fires

Part VI: People, Places, and Things

-The Real Birthday of Kansas

-The Kansas River in History

-Theodore Weichselbaum, Trader and Beer Maker

-The Lost Kansas Cattle Town

-Tellers and Portrayers of Tall Tales about Kansas

-Some Kansas Fish Stories

-“Bear” Facts about Kansas

-When Every Town Had a Band

Notes and Credits

Index

Editorial Reviews

"Dary is a popularizer, a skilled writer who takes historic facts and legends and weaves them together for the interested general reader. His easy, journalistic style and determination to tell a good story introduce history to an audience that may not have discovered the fascinating heritage of our remarkable state."—Wichita Eagle-Beacon

"This handsomely clad volume contains forty-one narratives about interesting people and outstanding events that have left their mark on the scroll of Kansas history. It should provide good reading for Kansans everywhere."—Great Plains Quarterly

"Dary is ever the master of narrative, and these swift-moving tales are always readable, often captivating. . . . This is a contribution to the literary heritage of the state."—Thomas Isern, coauthor of Plainsfolk

From the Publisher