Good book for the Colt bp revolver and Sharps rifle guys.

[Crawdad1]

Been reading, "Life Among The Apaches" by John C. Cremony a Time Life reprint under their Classics of the Old West series, and it has, so far, a lot of references to Colt revolvers. Its Cremony's journal during his expedition out west during the 1850's to explore the southwest. A good passage right at the beginning of the book,

'In a few moments Sait-jah, came towards me in a swaggering manner, and said in a broken Spanish, " Our chief said you have great medicine; he says that your pistols fires six times without reloading....he says a great many other wonderful things, which I cannot believe. You have bewitched him." Drawing a six-shooter from my belt, I pointed out a tree about seventy five yards distant and commenced firing rapidly. Each shot struck the tree, and blazed off large fragments of the bark. Sait-jah was astonished by the power of the weapon and made no attempt to conceal his surprise.'

I'm trying to figure out what he had, "drawing from the belt, a Dragoon or possibly a '51 Navy? Worn on the belt? But what else could he have had? He did fight in the Mexican War but resigned his commission and became a newspaper man in Boston after the war.

Interesting read I bought it on Amazon.

 

[Berkley]

Thanks for the heads-up.
A little Googling revealed that cheapskates like me can read it for free on the web: Life Among the Apaches

 

[White Walker]

Walker? Dragoon? Navy?

 

[4v50 Gary]

I doubt if it was a Walker. Many blew up. Anyhow, I'll have to get it via inter-library loan.

 

[Old Fuff]

It depends somewhat on how and what they defined as "...and blazed off large fragments of the bark." @ 75 yards," but from my perspective to do this at the stated distance would make a .44 Holster Model (Dragoon) the most likely.

 

[Crawdad1]

The closest date I can find is 1849. So being outfitted and moving west I don't think it could be a '51 Navy. It would almost have to be a Dragoon.

 

[witchhunter]

This is a great read, the author lived with the Apaches while in the army. He exposes several things about the Apaches beliefs and how they were successful for so long with so little. Great book. There is a guy in Silver City, New Mexico, his name is Dutch, he runs a bookstore there, I can't remember the name of it, but he has a ton of good books about the southwest, I have a few. There was an English rancher down there, his name was Montague Stevens. He ran bloodhounds for grizzly and lions, his dogs were so well known, they testified in court. His book is a must read also. There is Dale Lee's "life of the greatest guide", the Lee brothers ran hounds all the way to central America.

 

[Crawdad1]

I'll look for those books Witchhunter and the one , "Life of the Greatest Guide" sounds familiar. I just bought another Time Life Old West series, they're leather bound and really nice books, this one is;

"The Vigilantes of Montana".

Long winter coming and I have plenty of reading to do.

 

[witchhunter]

Dutch's store is called "High Lonesome Books", in Silver City. He is a good guy that has written a couple of southwestern books. Dutch Salmon. I looked him up after I saw your post and ordered a couple one of them is the Montague Stevens book, " They call me Mr. Grizzly". This guy was something else, shot his own arm off by accident carrying a shotgun on horseback. He mentions it like it was no big deal....