Legends of the Old West - OUTLAWS Ep. 1 | Sam Bass: “Indiana Cowboy”

Episode Date: February 14, 2024

Sam Bass began life as a typical farm boy in the midwestern United States. But as he grew older, and experienced more than his fair share of family tragedy, he dreamed of becoming a Texas cowboy. After a detour through Mississippi, he made it to Texas and started living his dream. He experienced exactly one cattle drive to Kansas before he decided there must be easier ways to make money.   Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join   Apple users join Noiser+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial.   For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.   On YouTube, subscribe to LEGENDS+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: hit “Join” on the Legends YouTube homepage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The rivers between South Texas and Kansas seemed uncountable. There was the Guadalupe, the Colorado, the Brazos, the Trinity, the Red, and those were just the big ones and only in Texas. There was also the Canadian, which cut straight through Indian territory, the modern-day state of Oklahoma. A cattle drive that started near San Antonio had to cross them all, and so many others, as Sam Bass was learning. many others, as Sam Bass was learning. Bass and his friend Joel Collins hired a crew of cowboys in the late spring of 1876 and set off from Texas toward the cow towns of Kansas. Sam was finally living the dream. As a farm boy from Indiana, Sam increasingly imagined himself driving cattle across the open ranges of Texas. As Sam grew up in the 1850s and 60s, the cowboy lifestyle was not widely romanticized the way it would be in the first half of the 20th

century. It couldn't be, it was just beginning. Even after it was established as a genuine occupation, cowboys were not heroes to the general public, but they were to Sam. He had made his way to Texas, and now he was riding north on his very first cattle drive. And he was quickly learning that the real life of a cowboy bore very little resemblance to the stories he'd read in newspapers and dime novels. Those stories had conveniently left out the hard parts of the job. It turned out that it took a special kind of person to ride a horse all day and keep hundreds of ornery cattle moving in the same direction, and then do it again the next day, and the next day, and the day after that, for weeks at a time, and do it in blustery wind, and driving rain, and under a blazing sun, all day, every day, and all night,

until the job was done. And Texas itself was a challenge. A couple generations in the future, a singer named Hermes Nye from Kansas would record a comical song about the creation of Texas. In the song, the devil wants to create a hell on earth to torment mankind. He asks God if God has any land left over from creation, and God says he has this patch of sand down here that might work. God and the devil struck a deal, and the devil went to work creating Texas. He loaded the land with horned toads, tarantulas, scorpions, centipedes, rattlesnakes, ants, fleas, and mosquitoes. He added thorns to the bushes, plants, and trees. He piled on punishing heat, and just for good measure, he fouled some of the water. And that was Texas.

As Hermes Nye sang, it was a hell of a place for a hell. As Sam Bass rode through the hell of a place called Texas, he increasingly questioned his boyhood dream of becoming a cowboy. Maybe, upon reflection, there were faster and decidedly easier ways to make money than bouncing in the saddle from dawn to dusk while living outdoors with a herd of smelly cattle and being slowly devoured by all of the hellish delights in Texas. From Black Barrel Media, this is Legends of the Old West. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season we're telling the stories of two outlaws, stagecoach and train robber Sam Bass, and controversial fugitive Ned Christie.

This is Episode 1, Sam Bass, Part 1 of 3, Indiana Cowboy. Sam Bass was a farm boy from Indiana who would probably have been considered a fairly typical Midwestern kid. He was born in 1851, and he and his six siblings were brought up by hardworking, law-abiding, God-fearing parents. By all accounts, Sam was a good kid. He helped his mother by watching out for his younger siblings, and he worked hard with his father on the farm. But when Sam was nine years old, he began to have tragic experiences that were also fairly typical for that time period.

Much like Buffalo Bill Cody, Sam Bass started losing family members at a young age. In early summer of 1861, as the nation began to recognize the magnitude of the growing crisis of the Civil War, Sam Bass's 39-year-old mother, Elizabeth, died while giving birth to her 10th child. The baby boy survived, but now he and Sam and five other siblings were motherless. Two Bass children had died before Sam was born, and now there were seven in the brood. Sam's sisters were put in

charge of caring for the baby, and Sam's father, Daniel, quickly remarried. His new wife, Margaret, was recently widowed, and she had two children of her own who needed a father. Soon, Daniel and Margaret had a child together, and now they were a blended family of 12 people living under one roof. But it wasn't long before that number would be reduced by one when Sam's older brother George went off to war. Sam was 10 years old when George joined the Indiana Militia. In the fall of 1862, George Bass fought at the Battle of Richmond, Kentucky, which was a resounding victory for the South.

More than 200 Union soldiers were killed, including 18-year-old George Bass. Sam worshipped his brother and never got over the loss. Then, two years later, Sam's father died of pneumonia. Daniel Bass was just 42 years old. Sam's stepmother took her three children and moved on, leaving the Bass children behind. Sam and his siblings were orphaned and then they were homeless. The kids watched tearfully as the family farm, the cabin they grew up in, their household belongings, and all their livestock were sold at auction. The Bass children moved into a three-room cabin with their uncle Dave, who owned a large homestead a few miles away. Sam's older sister, who was 16 and soon to be married, chose to move in with another relative who lived nearby. So, now, Sam's uncle, his orphaned nieces and nephews, his second wife

and their children were all living under one roof. 16 people were crammed into a claustrophobic existence. And even if you set aside the strained living arrangements, 13-year-old Sam Bass soon learned that he didn't get along with his Uncle Dave. The Bass children had never been to school. Like many families, the priority was for the kids to work on the farm. But Uncle Dave insisted that all children under his roof go to school when it was in session at the tiny schoolhouse that served their community. A school session was usually only three months long, but that was three months too many for Sam Bass. He skipped school as often as he could get away

with it. But despite his inconsistent attendance, he eventually learned to read. And that learning coincided with the rise of dime novels and glorified romanticized stories of the American West. It was a slow overlap, and teenage Sam Bass still had a lot of learning to do in other areas. But the seed had been planted, and over the next four years, as life with Uncle Dave grew more contentious, Sam fixated on a single dream, becoming a Texas cowboy. As a podcast network, our first priority has always been audio and the stories we're able to share with you. But we also sell merch, and organizing that was made both possible and easy with Shopify. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell and grow at every stage of your business.

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Shopify.com slash realm. Sam was not an eager student in the classroom, but he had been an eager student on his father's farm. Sam's father taught him how to plow, plant, and harvest. Sam knew how to raise cattle, horses, hogs, sheep, and chickens. And on the Bass family farm, there were acres that were thick with timber. Sam's father also taught him how to first identify and then select trees which were ready to be cut down. Logs that weren't used for fencing or other construction projects were chopped up into firewood to keep the cabin's wood stove burning through the winter. When Sam was old enough to handle a small team of horses,

he would harness up a couple of mares to a wagon and haul whatever surplus wood they had into town or to neighboring farms to sell. Other times, he hauled logs to his Uncle Dave's sawmill. After moving to his uncle's farm, Sam was put to work at the mill. It was hard work, but he learned a valuable trade that would help him later in life. Knowing how to turn raw wood into usable lumber was a handy skill when the whole country seemed to be under construction after the Civil War. Sam learned the skill from his uncle, but it wasn't by choice. Sam's uncle, Dave Sheeks, was a hard man.

He was well-respected in the community, but he was also a formidable figure to those who did business with him. He owned a spread that eventually exceeded 3,500 acres, which made him one of the area's largest and most prosperous landowners. And while Uncle Dave was known for having business sense, he was not known for his charm or for his love of children, although he eventually fathered 21 kids by three wives. Despite the coldness of Sam's uncle, Sam made the best of a less-than-ideal situation. He was a good brother to his younger siblings, and he took good care of the livestock. Sam especially loved horses, and he increasingly dreamed of joining a class of men who would soon be known as cowboys.

The profession was evolving from the old Mexican vaqueros, many of whom were elite ropers, horsemen, and cattlemen. The American cowboy would not be a beloved figure during his earliest days after the Civil War. Cowboys were viewed as rough men, dirty drinkers and brawlers, who were just slightly better than outlaws. But young Sam Bass would be drawn to that life as he grew older. After about a year on Uncle Dave's farm, the Civil War ended. And after that, westward expansion of the growing American nation burst to life like never before. Cattle operations west of the Mississippi River started in earnest. People hurried west to look for riches in gold mines and to find cheap land for farming or ranching. Railroads hurried west nearly as fast as people,

and new towns sprang up along their tracks. Many of those towns became hubs for the seasonal cattle drives that developed after the war. The towns quickly became raucous, lawless places. To tame them, local citizens hired the first generation of frontier lawmen. One of those men would be known as Wild Bill Hickok. And in that same decade of enormous change, the 1860s, the dime novel as we know it today exploded in popularity. Stories of Hickok, Kit Carson, Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, and many others filled the pages of newspapers and magazines and dime novels. Teenage Sam Bass read as many as he could, and he found an escape in tales of the western frontier and the cowboy life.

Sam became more determined than ever to leave Uncle Dave's farm and head west. As Sam grew older, taller, and stronger, Uncle Dave became less intimidating. Sam became more rebellious and more resentful of his uncle, and their relationship became more rebellious and more resentful of his uncle, and their relationship became more contentious. When Sam was 17 years old, it all came to a head. He and Uncle Dave had it out, and Sam Bass started his journey westward. Like many fights, the one between Sam Bass and his Uncle Dave was about money. Sam was desperate to explore the West, but there was a problem.

He needed a good horse and a good saddle, and those cost money. He had spent the better part of four years working for his uncle, and he hadn't been paid a dime. One day, Sam confronted his uncle and said he felt he deserved to be paid at least the same amount as the other workers on the farm. Uncle Dave refused and accused his nephew of being ungrateful. The simmering animosity between the two finally boiled over, and a screaming match nearly resulted in them coming to blows. According to Sam, his uncle picked up a chair and threatened to smash it over his head. If Sam hadn't run outside, Uncle Dave probably would have used the chair. Sam knew he needed to leave before someone got hurt or worse. The next morning, he packed up

his few belongings and said goodbye to his siblings and his cousins. He went to his parents' grave and bid them a final farewell before leaving Indiana behind for good. Unlike many who simply drifted with the wind in a westward direction, Sam knew exactly where he wanted to go. He wanted to be a cowboy, and if a young man in the late 1860s wanted to be a cowboy, there was only one place to go. Texas.

Texas was a long way from Indiana, so Sam needed a plan. He decided he would first travel to St. Louis, the city known as the Gateway to the West. But St. Louis was still 250 miles away. The closest town to Sam was a little blip on the map called Mitchell, Indiana. It might have been tiny, but it had a train station, and Sam knew that a train to St. Louis stopped in Mitchell at 1 a.m. every morning. He also knew the fare was $10, which was no small chunk of change in 1868. It's unknown if Sam borrowed the money to pay the fare

or if he snuck on board. But whatever the case, he got on the train and he woke up the next day in St. Louis, Missouri. For a Hoosier farm boy who had never left the county in which he was born, St. Louis was a spectacular and daunting sight to behold. The booming metropolis was home to about 300,000 people. Many were full-time residents, but many more were there to begin the long and dangerous journey farther west. Sam hoped he might meet some fellow travelers

headed down to Texas and he could hitch a ride, but no such luck. After a few days of wandering through St. Louis, Sam decided it was time to move on. And moving on meant heading south down the mighty Mississippi River. Sam boarded a steamboat and rowed it to Rosedale, Mississippi, about 400 miles downriver from St. Louis and about 30 miles downriver from Clarksdale, Mississippi, the future home of legendary blues guitarist Robert Johnson. In Rosedale, Sam got lucky and found a job at a sawmill. All those hours spent toiling away at Uncle Dave's mill for free were finally paying off. Sam was now making money, and he impressed his new bosses with his skill and work ethic. He was known to be an affable young man, and he fit in nicely.

He started saving his money to buy the good horse and saddle and a rifle for his trip to Texas. But he didn't save all his money. The pit stop in Rosedale ended up lasting more than a year, and during that time, Sam learned some new skills and discovered some new interests. The first new skill, which was vitally important to a young man who wanted to explore the West, was the fine art of poker. When Sam was a boy, he and his friends liked to gamble, making penny and nickel bets on marbles, sled racing, target shooting, those sorts of things.

But coming from a family of strict Baptists who believed gambling of any kind was the work of the devil, he had to keep it a secret. Not anymore. Now, Sam learned the ins and outs of five-card stud. And when you're playing five-card stud, especially in a saloon, you're almost required by law to have a particular beverage near at hand. Along with his newfound love of poker, Sam acquired another un-Baptist-like habit, the taste for whiskey.

After poker and whiskey, he learned how to use a pistol. As a youngster, Sam had learned to use a rifle like all farm boys across the country. But in Mississippi, he trained with a handgun. He knew that in the West, he would need to be able to think fast, draw fast, and shoot straight. That didn't mean he had plans to become a gunslinger, but if a poker game went off the rails and turned nasty, as they often did, he would be able to defend himself. Lastly, as he sat at the poker tables with a whiskey nearby, he learned about Texas. As often happens, the reality of the situation

turned out to be a little different than the romantic notions he had built up in his mind. During Sam's travels since leaving Indiana, he had heard more than a few cautionary tales from people who had already been to Texas and come back. Many of them felt lucky to be alive. Texas was an unpredictable, untamed, and dangerous land, and so were many of the men who inhabited it. Trigger-happy desperados made up a good slice of the population, and Texas, like the entire South, was in turmoil after the Civil War. Carpetbaggers from the North had infected the state like typhoid fever,

and the land itself could be harsh and inhospitable. One of the top generals in the army, Phil Sheridan, uttered one of the most memorable and repeated quotes in the history of the American West, and it was about Texas. Immediately after the Civil War, Sheridan was assigned to Texas. When he was later transferred to Louisiana and endured a punishing trip through Texas in the brutal heat of August, he said to a reporter, If I owned Texas and hell, I would rent out Texas and live in hell. But Sam Bass was undeterred by witty quips from generals and cautionary tales from fellow travelers. He was headed to Texas no matter what.

tales from fellow travelers. He was headed to Texas no matter what. Sam was now nearly 20 years old, and he was confident he could face any challenge and hold his own. Sam traveled 350 miles straight west from Rosedale and settled in a town called Denton. It was about 30 miles north of Dallas and about 30 miles south of Indian Territory, the modern-day state of Oklahoma. Cattle was the business of the age, and Denton County was a good place to be if you were an aspiring cowboy. Given his background with livestock, and now being the proud owner of a good horse and a good saddle, Sam thought he would have no trouble finding a job on a ranch. But his first job in Texas was ironic, given the future that was in store. Soon after arriving in Denton, he became an assistant to the Denton County Sheriff, William Egan.

Sam helped the sheriff with his official duties in and around town, and he also lived and worked as a hired hand on the ranch that Sheriff Egan owned outside of town. The sheriff eventually became a sort of father figure to Sam Bass, and Sam took to calling him Dad Egan. Over the next five years or so, Sam became a fixture in Denton. He was well-liked, at least by those who didn't lose to him at the poker tables. Whether it was talent or luck or a bit of both, Sam gained a reputation as a skilled gambler, and not just at cards. He also loved to gamble

on horses. That was how he met the young man who would soon become his literal partner in crime. Sam had a knack for picking winning racehorses, and eventually he made enough money to buy himself his own winner, a mare named Jenny. While racing Jenny down in San Antonio, Sam met a somewhat shady saloon owner named Joel Collins. Sam was 25 years old and Joel was a little older, and the two became fast friends and quickly realized they shared a common interest, getting rich. And in the 1870s, the path to riches in Texas was in the cattle business. Joel Collins had worked as a cowboy and done a few cattle drives along the Chisholm Trail, which ran from Texas to Kansas. In the spring of 1876, the demand for beef was still rising. Kansas cow towns were booming, and new friends Sam Bass and

Joel Collins came up with a plan. Joel would sell his saloon, Sam would sell Jenny, and they would buy their own herd. They'd get Joel's brother, who was a local cattle broker, to give them another couple hundred head on credit, and they would likely find stray, unbranded cattle along the way. According to Collins, when they drove their herd to market, they could expect to cash in big on their investment. The plan sounded like a good bet to Sam, and at last, it would allow him to live his dream.

Sam Bass was going to be a real cowboy. He and Collins bought a few hundred head of cattle. They hired some hands to help with the drive and stepped onto the trail like so many others before them. It didn't take long for Sam Bass to realize that herding cattle across 700 miles of wild country, in all types of weather, was not going to be the type of adventure he had imagined. As the team trudged north through Texas in the late spring and early summer of 1876, Sam Bass received a crash course in cowboying. It's probably safe to say the skills Sam learned along the way were not nearly as fun as those he had learned in Rosedale. The cowboy life was a far cry from whiskey and five-card stud in saloons in Mississippi.

Cattle drives demanded hard work, all day, every day, and they were notoriously dangerous. Traveling the Chisholm Trail required crossing a seemingly endless series of rivers. all day, every day, and they were notoriously dangerous. Traveling the Chisholm Trail required crossing a seemingly endless series of rivers. Failed attempts to do so had killed more than a few cowboys and cattle. Although attacks by Native Americans were not as prevalent as in years past, there were still renegade warriors on the prowl, and there was no shortage of outlaws who waited to rustle the stock. And perhaps the biggest fear,

the one that could pop up at any time with little or no warning, was the stampede. Hundreds or thousands of cattle rampaging across the broken landscape in a mindless terror was the absolute last thing a cowboy wanted to experience. And if a stampede happened at night, during and as the result of a violent thunderstorm, that was probably the worst-case scenario. At night, cowboys were known to sing to their herds to keep them calm. Sam took his turn staying up all night and singing or humming soothing melodies to the cattle. staying up all night and singing or humming soothing melodies to the cattle. And if Sam had continued to make his living in the cattle business, as he used to dream he would, he would probably have been lost to history as another nameless cowboy. But no more than 50 years after

Sam Bass sang to his cattle in the summer of 1876, people were singing about him. And it wasn't because he became a legendary cowboy. In fact, he quickly decided that cowboy life was not for him. Sam and Joel directed their herd to the market at Abilene, Kansas, thereby missing their chance to cross paths with two young lawmen named Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson over in Dodge City. Sam and Joel sold their cattle and earned a nice profit, just as Joel had promised. But then they had to pay their cow hands and their creditors back in Texas. When that was done, they had about $8,000 left. Split two ways, they each made $4,000 for their efforts,

and they agreed the money wasn't worth the work. There had to be an easier and faster way to get rich. After exactly one cattle drive, they were done with the cattle business. But in Texas, the cattle business was all there was. It would be another 20 years before the first significant discovery of oil in the state, and another 10 years after that before oil became a serious industry. So, in the late summer of 1876, Sam and Joel decided to head north. If there was one place to find riches that summer, it was in an illegal mining camp in the Black Hills.

Miners were flooding into the gulches of the hills and reportedly pulling gold out by the handful. Newspapers were dominated by stories of Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and a detachment of the 7th Cavalry who were wiped out in a battle along the banks of the Little Bighorn River in southern Montana. After that shocking development, the gold rush in the Black Hills was a free-for-all, and Sam Bass and Joel Collins headed for Deadwood. Next time on Legends of the Old West, Sam Bass trades the cowboy life for the outlaw life. He and Joel Collins try their hands at being legitimate miners, but they soon form an outlaw gang and spend months robbing stagecoaches in the Black Hills region.

And when they expand into train robbing, they become historically lucky when they find a shipment of gold coins. That's next week on Legends of the Old West. coins. That's next week are just $5 per month. This series was researched and written by Michael Byrne. Original music by Rob Valliere. I'm your host and producer, Chris Wimmer. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening.

Check out our website, blackbarrelmedia.com for more details and join us on social media. We're at Old West Podcast on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. And all our episodes are available on YouTube. Just search for Legends of the Old West Podcast. Thanks for listening.