Lincoln County War: The Hidden Warrior

The majestic plateaus of the Pekis Valley, they encompassed the heart of Lincoln County, Lincoln County was one of 12 counties in the New Mexico territory in the late 1870s, but by itself comprised 25% of the landmass of the entire territory. The town of Lincoln, known as La Placita in the 1870s, was the county seat. Lincoln County was a land of wild beauty, but all was not as peaceful as it seemed. Lincoln County in the 1870s was an area of turmoil and strife, trouble loomed darkly on the horizon for the residents of Lincoln. The county was still an untamed territory filled with cattle rustlers, Indians, bandits, and outlaws. Many of the most famous Western outlaws like Billy the Kid, Jesse Evans, and Charles Boudrey

thrived in this time in area. The government in the 1870s, under the leadership of President Rutherford B. Hayes, had a policy to stay out of civil disputes. In many cases, the law was put into the hands of bounty hunters and hunted down wanted criminals. La Placita was a relatively small town of about 640 that had been in existence for hundreds of years. It was, and it is, an area of rich history and culture. A general mercantile in La Placita, or Lincoln, as it's known today, was owned by a group of businessmen, LG Murphy, JJ Doran, John Riley, and Emil Fritz. This establishment became known as the House. This mercantile engaged in shoddy business practices. From the records of the House, it is apparent that unlimited credit lines were given to virtually anyone,

and that there seemed to be no provisions for repayment. They accepted contracts for cattle and supplies and access to what they were able to provide, and so had to resort to cattle rustling and stealing. Their books also showed that they were almost constantly in the red and seem unconcerned. Even so, the House had a stranglehold on the trade and economy of Lincoln County. None of these practices changed when LG Murphy left the House and the care of JJ Doran and John Riley. Soon after Murphy left, Emil Fritz went back home to Germany where he died. The struggle over his $10,000 life insurance policy began events that would leave Lincoln in turmoil. John Tunstle was an Englishman from a wealthy family. He came to the United States to make his fortune. After much traveling, he ended up in Santa Fe, where he met Alexander McSween. McSween had been the attorney for the House, but had quit during the struggle for Fritz's life insurance policy. McSween convinced Tunstle to settle in Laplacita.

After arriving, Tunstle and McSween soon went into a partnership with John Chisholm, a cataman who at times had heard of over $80,000. Together, they opened a general mercantile in Laplacita, which competed with the House and brought prices down. Many of the townspeople were happy to see the Tunstle store open. They had been living too wrong under the tyranny of the House. The Hispanic population especially supported Tunstle, largely because of their fondness for Billy the Kid, who was fluent in Spanish. This infuriated Doran and Riley, they obtained a bogus quarter order, attaching some of Tunstle's horses for payment on a past debt. Tunstle refused to give the horses up. When a posse appointed by the town sheriff William Brady approached the Tunstle ranch, John Tunstle and a few of his men rode out toward Lincoln, taking the horses with them. The posse caught up with them 30 miles from the ranch. Tunstle and his men, one of whom was Billy the Kid, scattered, leaving the horses for the posse.

But the posse followed Tunstle and shot him down several hundred yards from the horses. This was all documented in special agent angels' notes. He surmised the actions of the posse to amount to co-blooded murder. William Bonnie, also known as Billy the Kid or Just the Kid, was working for Tunstle at the time. They were also good friends. The kid did not see his boss and friend killed, but he heard the gunshots. Because of this tragedy, a group of about 40 men formed, many of whom were Hispanic, and called themselves the regulators. The events that followed forever changed the lives of the residents of Lincoln County. Don McCalvey is a leading historian on High Plains history. He is president of the High Plains Historical Foundation and has a fascination with the Lincoln County War and Billy the Kid. Everybody wants to know what calls the Lincoln County War. And forever, a body that tells you one thing, there's another answer. The main thing that started the Lincoln County War was a power struggle to control the economy,

the offices of the sheriff, the judges. It was that until, and you understand now, Murphy and Dolan had them unoply down there. They had what they called a big store, which is now the Lincoln County whole courthouse. They had the big store, so they had no competition. They could charge any price they wanted to, jack it up, and they did. They skinned the people. And when Constell came in there, from England, with money, supplied by his father, who was rich, he talked, McSweeney and Anne to help him, as a lawyer, McSweeney was a lawyer, to put a store in, almost across the street from the big house, the Murphy Dolan House. And that's where competition got fierce. And it made the Murphy Dolan people shake. But what really got the war going, and the fighting and the shooting started,

is when the Murphy Dolan bunch murdered Mr. Tomstall. This was in 1878. True Comber is a columnist for the Riodoso News. He is also a historian at the Lincoln County Heritage Trust, and is very knowledgeable on Southwestern history. The House was essentially a group of ex-army men, that saw an economic opportunity here in Lincoln County and jumped at it. And you certainly can't blame them for that. There were partners, LG Murphy and Emil Fritz and Jimmy Dolan, were the most preeminent of them. It was Fritz's death in Germany that put the wheels in motion that eventually led to Lincoln County war. He had a $10,000 life insurance policy. And when he died, Jimmy Dolan suddenly discovered that low and behold Fritz had owed the house, the company of Murphy Dolan, exactly $10,000. It was an amazing coincidence.

Now, the 1870s was when the Lincoln County War was going on. And what was the business climate down there? It was a good business climate for Chisholm, John Chisholm. He was selling his herds other than the army posts there in Lincoln and to the Indians there. And the business climate for Murphy and Dolan was pretty good until they got competition. But far as the Hispanic goal, Hispanic people went, their business climate was gauged on who controlled the county. The Santa Fe ring was a coalition of mostly Republicans but also some Democrats who were more committed to maintaining their control over the economy and the politics of the state than they were dedicated to party. Dr. Robert Muthini is a professor of history emeritus at Eastern Mexico University. Dr. Muthini acknowledges that it was the climate of the times

that led to events like the Lincoln County War. So in Lincoln County, there was not much there, of course, prior to the war. And it pretty well reflected those interests. There were a lot of ordinary individuals, farmers, Hispanic farmers, Anglo farmers, along the Hondo and the Red Oso and also the Manito. The factions that were pitted against each other at Lincoln County War, there was small factions. The Hispanics were against the Anglos, not all the time, but there was some fixture friction there. There was a rich against the poor, same thing. And there was the faction between the Catholics and the Protestants. He wouldn't think that, but there were. And then, but you have to remember, the most things that most people remember about the factions

that were down there was the Murphy-Dolan faction as opposed to the Tone Still McSweden faction. And that's where all the friction was. And each side hired Goodman to protect their own, you know. And the Dolan Murphy bunch used the law, the courts, and the law officers, and the Attorney General's, off and all the way from Santa Fe, the governor, the Attorney General of New Mexico, all the way down to the courts. And what happened is the director of the Lincoln County Heritage Trust in Lincoln, New Mexico. She enjoys sharing her knowledge of the Lincoln County War with visitors. These guys on different sides, you know, the Murphy-Dolan versus the McSweden, Tone Still sides, would duke it out in the middle of the street. And then, after they bloodied their noses and broke their teeth or whatever, they'd say, oh, yeah, don't forget, we're going to have a Masonic meeting next Tuesday night. They were kind of thing, and it made me laugh because they were, to me, they were talking out of both sides of their mouths on a situation that was supposed to be,

that's where politics and money get in on it. John Pustle was an Englishman who was sent abroad by his family when he was in his late teens to, he was going to make his fortune, basically. He was an adventurer in many ways. And he went, he came here by way of Canada and California. He was, Tone Still was quite patrician, and he really rubbed the Murphy-Dolan contingent the wrong way, especially because they were Irish and he was English. And the fact that he felt that he could, you know, put them in their place with a few scathing remarks was a serious error in his judgment, and it cost him his life, ultimately. But really, what Tone Still did when he got here was to go into competition with Murphy and Dolan. And at that time, Murphy and Dolan held what was more or less a monopoly on all the money in Lincoln County. And Tone Still really wanted to replace them. At the time, people thought, local people thought that Tone Still was going to save them,

essentially, for Murphy and Dolan, because he was, you know, undercutting their prices. And that sort of thing, what we now know from Tone Still's letters home is that he did not want to save anybody. He simply wanted to replace the monopoly that Murphy and Dolan had with his own. And he didn't live long enough to see his dreams come to fruition, essentially, because he underrated and underestimated who he was dealing with, and they killed him for it. Drew also believes that Billy the Kid's role in the Lincoln County War was not quite the same as Hollywood portrays it. The Kid's role in the war was really that of a soldier. He, unlike in most films where he's depicted as a leader, that wasn't the case. He was just a soldier until the very end of the war, which was when he first took command. But as far as being called Billy the Kid, he was not called Billy the Kid during the Lincoln County War. It was only afterwards that he went by that name during the Lincoln County War. He's known primarily as Kid Antrim or just Kid. The role that one of the participants in the war took, his name was William Bonnie.

He was born in Henry McCarty, probably in New York, some say Indiana now. But he was hired by Tone Still, and Billy came in there in that area from Arizona through Lost Cruces across the mountains to the Peckas Valley. He first met John Chisholm. John Chisholm said, I can find you a good job. You can work for Tone Still. He's looking for hard hands. So, Billy William Bonnie went to work for John Tone Still. And when Tone Still was murdered, Billy was nearby, but he wasn't at the scene. He's more vengeance, so knows it murdered him. And Billy the Kid, for instance, was very popular with many Hispanics. And it appeared to them that the Tone Still side of the Lincoln County War would more positively respond to the Hispanic population than with Murphy. Joe Salazar has resided in Lincoln all of his life.

He is Ijinho Salazar's grandson, who was one of the regulators. Well, see, a lot of people kind of get the wrong impression about Billy Kid leading him. He wasn't leading anybody. The Spanish people were protecting him. They kept him hid, and he was just one of them. Nobody laid anybody. Billy Kid actually was pretty vicious. And he's the one that said he'd get even with all of them for killing Tone Still. And so, whether he laid them or not, I don't know, the fact that that was their person that they were going to count on to restore the land of the Spanish people. And the regulators had already been informed before Billy Kid even got here. There were many more Hispanics than there were Angle, but there were less than 500 people in town. The other thing that we forget, too, is that there's a main street in Lincoln.

It's called Highway 380, now, or Main Street. Back then, of course, it was all dirt. And there were little roads that went off toward the Asakia, to the south, and toward the river to the north. And little Hacals dotted these little roads. And these were primarily Hispanics. Later, after the Civil War, then more and more Anglos started coming in. And there were a few blacks, black people who came in, too. That was the influence of the Buffalo soldier. But less than 500 people. The riders that came in the future, they labeled the Hispanic, that was the word that was even brought in in the 60s. At that time, and even whenever I was in grade school, the Spaniards were considered white.

They were from Europe. And then the riders started kind of belittling. The rays do the fact that there was animosties between the horals. And there was animosties between the Masons and the English and Irish that were here in the Catholics. And so they started, they put a label on everybody here as a Mexican. There was probably three Mexicans here in probably 300 Spaniards from Spain. The Hispanic population was always larger than the Anglo population during the war, although the Anglos were the ones that pretty much instigated and ran the war. Contrary to popular opinion, there were a lot of Hispanic regulators that rode with Billy the Kid and the other regulators. There had been growing tensions between Hispanics and Anglo-Americans, certainly since Texas Independence, and since the Texas Antifact Expedition of 1841.

And as a result of all of the land grant problems that were taking place in the Mexico, and the fact that most of the Hispanics were indebted to the Murphy-Dolen Raleigh House that lived in the Lincoln area. So there's no question that there were some problems associated with that. And when the Texas Cowboys and the Texas Cattlemen started coming into New Mexico, they engendered a great deal of discomfort and animosity. Most Texans came here because it was a good country for cattle. And a lot of people were just trying to get away from Texas. Liz and Olvacaro saying that says New Mexico, so far from heaven, so close to Texas. I'm not too well-versed on the horror of war. All I know is that three miles from here, they rode in over the mountain that was south of Lincoln. And I think it was about six of them, and they were just shooting at Will.

And they killed 17 or 18 people that were in the conventional there. And there was a place where he studied catechism with sisters and Catholicism. And they shot several people and killed them there. And my understanding is that some of the horals were angry on the count of what had happened in the animal. The horals from Texas caused a lot of racial tension here in town. After they shot up the wedding party across the road. But as far as racial tension with the families that knew each other, it was not evident. The Hispanics generally, most of them, sided with Ponceville and McSween because Ponceville McSween came in there to compete and try to stop the Murphy-Dolan bunch from keeping control and keeping Hispanics under their thumb

and charging any price they wanted to. So the Hispanics was happy to see Ponceville and McSween open the store and charge them last and pay them more for their produce. So they, most of them, fought arms, Ponceville and McSween inside. McSween comes very ambitious. He was only about 36 years of age when he was killed. But he doesn't have capital and Ponceville does. So he attaches himself to Ponceville. He becomes the attorney for Ponceville. And as a result of that, he has a major role in the Lincoln County War. When John Ponceville was killed in the Lincoln County War broke out, Ponceville's former employees who became the regulators were basically under the command of McSween who should never have been in command. He was not suited at all for the role of the warrior. His wife Susan was and she should have been in command. And if she had been, the war might have had a different outcome, but she wasn't.

McSween's death in 1878 in his house was, well, it was a tragedy, of course. But what he did was, he made a lot of bad judgments during the five-day battle at the end of the war. And by the time the last day came around, he was reduced to basically sitting with his head in his hands. So he had given up and it was at that point that Billy the kid took control and command for the first time. Well, when the three-day battle that they call it in the final day, Miss McSween was moving her piano from room to room and they'd cut the house on fire. Of course, she'd left. They'd kill McSween, had my grandfather and Billy get in the gym with a name of Francisco Zamora with the last four in the house. Better the kid than McSween evidently attempt to get out the back door.

Better the kid makes it across the backyard, across the Adobe fans and down across the Vanita. McSween is killed as he's standing, as I remember it, as he's standing in his kitchen door. But the kid escaped. Now, that becomes a big part of the legend because he's almost this mysterious spiritual figure running across the backyard dodging bullets. But whatever happened, the kid that escaped, McSween was killed at that time. Not essentially takes care of Tomstle and McSween and that side of the war, except for the bitterness and hostility that remains, with mid of the kid and a few other folks. The kid was friendly with everybody. That's what you have to take into consideration. He went out of his way to be friendly with everybody and consequently he was friendly with Garrett. Garrett was not a man who was well liked by anyone. He was quite abrasive, although he was also very dedicated. He had his good points, but as far as being a well-like man in this area, he was not.

The kid said some things that implicated that he respected Garrett and did not hold anything against him, even arresting him and getting him a sentence to death ultimately. Apparently, the kid did not really hold that against him and was bob Olinger that he despised when Garrett's death produced. The changes that were brought on by the five-day value, which I'm about 1878, that I love 1878, were obscure. There were still some hard feelings, of course, but they were... People had their own lives. Life goes on and it did. And so people pretty much turned into their own business after the war. The Lincoln County War developed one hero in terms of folklore and myth. But in reality, no one really won in the Lincoln County War. Everybody lost. And many of them, of course, lost their lives.

So it would appear from a careful look at the record and from Tomstle's remarks. And thank goodness, Tomstle wrote a lot of letters home. So there is a great deal of evidence for Tomstle's side of this in terms of how he felt about things. But his primary objective was to make money. Murphy's primary objective was to make money. The legend tends to line up the Murphy, the Doe and Riley folks with the big ranchers against the small ranchers and the Hispanics on the Tomstle McSwain and Chesam's side. Now, to back up a little bit, what resolved about the Lincoln County War, it really, when the war ended, it didn't resolve the question about building the kid. Pat Garrett solved that problem for killing him. But prior to Pat Garrett's solving, Billy was rusting cattle. And Billy was never paid for any of the work he did.

He made a big pay for Tomstle for a copier. But McSwain, after he was killed, McSwain didn't pay him. So when he got through, in some of his bolt men, a Tomstle father and Charlie Bowdry and a few others, they said, we never got paid. And Billy told Pat Tomstle John Chesam, I'm going to steal a cow from you and rack it up what you owe us. And I'm going to figure that each cow is worth $5. And Billy stole cattle from him. And Billy stole cattle from him. And drove him to the people that was having the beef contract then to serve the Army and Indian. He would go to Tascos, so over here in a panhandle, a good community growing up there. He would go there and sell them horses. He'd steal them in New Mexico. And coming back, of course, he would give up cattle. He found all of those Texan ranchers and bring them out back and sell them to the contractors that were serving beef to the Army and to the Indians. So Billy, it resolved, the problem was resolved when all the participants were killed, the leaders, except for Chesam. And he died of cancer, choke cancer. And Billy was killed by Pat Garrett.

And that really resolved the war. Okay. And the story. The story of Lincoln County and its many wars is passed down from generation to generation. Novelists, playwrights, and historians alike have attempted to retrace the development of Lincoln and the surrounding area. There were different accounts of the economic status in Lincoln County in the 1870s. Records from the time often yield unsubstantiated and conflicting accounts of the goings-on in Lincoln. Tensions still exist between some of the descendants of the different factions of the Lincoln County War. The economic mainstay in Lincoln at the time was cattle and corn. Cash deals were scarce, and county residents relied on barter in the credit system. The mercantile owned by LG Murphy and company did not even have an organized system in use for determining credit limits or enforcing payments. At times, the House resorted to villainous tactics to lay claim on an old debt. Even so, the House controlled the economy of Lincoln in the 1870s.

The arrival of Tundstill in Lincoln brought changes that the citizens were more than happy to see. Many Hispanic ranchers and farmers in the area sided with John Tundstill for this reason. Billy the Kid was also well-liked and unknowingly influenced many of the residents of Lincoln. The Lincoln County War was brought on by economic incongruities and personal differences between a few businessmen that caused much pain for many citizens of Lapa Sita and Lincoln County. Although many accounts of the Lincoln County War mocused on the Anglo-businessmen and outlaws, the Hispanic farmers and ranchers suffered the most. The census of 1880 reported that 20% of the Hispanic households in Lincoln were headed by widows. Of all the Hispanic men that died, only two died of natural causes. Lincoln County has etched its name with blood into history. Characters that would be played out in both fact and fiction were unaware of the popularity they would later achieve. Figures like Billy the Kid, Sheriff Pat Garrett and John Chisholm are part of our great and sometimes tragic Southwest history.

They stand to represent the vivid imagery of our untamed Southwest, but behind them stand a multitude of unrecognized heroes, mostly Hispanic, who fought to protect their families and their way of life. The Lincoln County War, tragic as it was, helped to define our great country as it is today. To learn more about the Lincoln County War, visit these websites. . . . . .

. .