The Almighty Algorithm threw a sword at me. I’m not much of a sword guy, really. But this un is so redolent of the 18th Century. If a Frontier Partisan is gonna wield a fancy sword, it’s likely going to be one like this — the hunting sword or cuttoe.

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Alex Dold found herself a pretty cool niche in academia. She’s a specialist in the history of 18th Century Scotland — and did her doctoral work examining the intersection of that history with popular perception through the lens of Outlander. So, of course, she earned the informal title of Doctor of Outlander.

As a historian with specialist knowledge of eighteenth-century Scotland, I bring both academic rigour and storytelling flair to the world of Outlander. My research explores the real history behind the novels and television series—from Jacobite politics and Highland culture to the everyday details of life in the eighteenth century. In my doctoral thesis, I argue that Outlander itself functions as a form of public history, shaping how audiences around the world engage with Scotland’s past. 

She was recently a guest on the most enjoyable After Dark podcast, which explores the intersection of history and folklore — particularly of the macabre kind.

Outlander

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Damien Lewis, popular historian of World War II special operations, scouted up this one, a doco on the exploits of a Maori warrior in the North African campaign:

Sgt. Haane tells the story of L. Sgt. Haane Manahi DCM (Te Arawa, Ngāti Raukawa), whose extraordinary courage during a 1943 World War II battle at Takrouna, Tunisia, secured a critical victory for the Allies. 

Blending dramatic re‑enactment with the voices of descendants, the film explores legacy, whakapapa and remembrance.

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This looks weird, wild — and fun…

“At the dawn of the 20th century, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show rolls into Italy, peddling the myth of the American frontier and sparking the imagination of Rosa, a young woman trapped in a stifling marriage to a powerful and violent landowner.

“When a rodeo between American cowboys and Italian butteri ends in tragedy, Rosa flees with Santino, the daring local rider who bested the Americans. But in a world where justice is sold to the highest bidder, Buffalo Bill and others join the hunt for the bounty on Santino’s head. Rosa’s dream of freedom quickly collides with the weight of reality — and like in every good Western ballad, fate flips a coin.”

But… while Geronimo has become a symbol of patriotic Apache resistance, and he earned his reputation as a fearsome warrior, he was also widely regarded — by many of his own people — as a treacherous liar, a mean drunk, and a murderous sonfoabitch. On more than one occasion, the famous Apache put the “bad” in badass.

One such occasion was the Stevens Ranch Massacre on April 17, 1882.

Geronimo by Guy Manning.

In September 1881, 375 Chiricahua Apaches led by a number of chiefs and warriors including Chihuahua, Naiche (the son of Cochise), Chatto, and Geronimo busted out of the San Carlos Reservation in Central Arizona and hightailed it for the Sierra Madre Mountains of Mexico. The Chiricahuas had grown discontented at San Carlos, and the killing of a messianic prophet at Cibecue Creek had made the atmosphere tense. Troop movements in and around the agency made the Chiricahua restless and suspicious — maybe to the point of paranoia — and particularly alarmed Geronimo, who had been arrested and held in chains once before. The warrior Chatto, who would later become an ace U.S. Army Scout, recalled that:

“The talk of troops made Geronimo nervous. He was like a wild animal.”

The Apaches — warriors, women and children — made it safely into Sonora and commenced to raiding. The Mexicans responded with army and paramilitary patrols that put increasing pressure on the Apaches. Popular history has tended to portray the Mexicans as somewhat hapless in their long war with the Apaches, but that is not an accurate depiction, particularly by the 1880s. A force of Chihuahua state troops and Tarahumara Scouts had found, fixed and destroyed Victorio’s band at Tres Castillos in October 1880. The Mexican forces, particularly the paramilitaries composed of tough and well-armed vaqueros, were no joke.

Vaquero Charge by Bob Boze Bell.

The Chiricahua war captains, including Geronimo, decided that if they were to live free as raiders in the Sierra Madre, they needed more fighting men. They knew where to find them. Chief Loco was the leader of some 270 Chihenne Chiricahua who had refused to join the 1881 breakout. Geronimo and the other militants determined to return across the border to San Carlos and “liberate” them. If they decided to come along willingly, all to the good. If they refused again, the militants would force them at gunpoint. The mission was essentially a large-scale kidnapping operation.

In April, Geronimo and about 60 warriors crossed the border, probably at Guadalupe Canyon where Arizona and New Mexico meet, readily evaded U.S. patrols and began following the mountains northwest toward San Carlos. On April 16, they approached Ash Flat, northeast of modern Bryce, Arizona, where an Anglo named George Stevens (sometimes spelled Stephens) had a sheep camp.

What followed was one of the darkest deeds of Geronimo’s violent career.

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Cutting Trail by Don Oelze.

On the afternoon of April 16, a White Mountain Apache named Bylas, sometimes called Richard Bylas, rode into the Stevens sheep camp with a warning: A large party of Chiricahua Apaches were headed toward the camp.

The White Mountain people were a separate branch of the highly decentralized Apache, and were far more accommodating of the Americans in Arizona than were the militant Chiricahua. White Mountain Apaches regularly served as scouts for the U.S. Army, and they were active in the livestock industry, raising cattle and, in this case herding sheep. Bylas, whose uncle had been killed by Victorio, was the leader of a contingent of White Mountain Apaches who were working with the Stevens operation.  Bylas would be the main source of information for what transpired at the camp, relating the events to George Stevens’ son Jimmie.*

The White Mountain Apache Bylas.

Neither George Stevens nor Jimmie were in the camp, which was under the supervision of a Mexican foreman named Victoriano Mestas. As fate would have it, Mestas had, in his youth, been a captive of the Chiricahua, and he knew Geronimo. So did Bylas. The geography of the Apache world was vast, but their social orbit was small.

At Bylas’s urging, Mestas moved the encampment to higher ground among rocks that made a defensible position. A few hours before dawn on April 17, a powerful voice came out of the desert, hailing the camp. It was Geronimo.

The Chiricahuas had clearly reconnoitered the camp and recognized Mestas, because Geronimo hailed him by name:

“It’s me, Mestas, it is Geronimo. I have many men and they are hungry. We will not harm you, for I am Geronimo, your friend.”

Bylas warned Mestas not to let Geronimo into the camp, telling the Mexican that the Chircauhuas would certainly kill them. Bylas yelled out to Geronimo:

“You lie, Geronimo. You want to kill us. Always you are a liar.”

Geronimo ignored this, and continued to work on Mestas, who told Bylas that he remembered Geronimo giving him a pony and a saddle. Bylas reminded Mestas that this had occurred when Mestas was living among the Chiricahua. Geronimo had traded him away, and now he was working for a white man, and Geronimo meant to kill him. Mestas didn’t want a fight, and he finally broke down and invited Geronimo and the Chiricahuas into the camp.

Bylas drained off the dregs of his last bottle of whiskey. He knew that Geronimo would be looking for a drink. He was right. The Chiricahua demanded a bottle, which Bylas told him he didn’t have, and Geronimo would continue to pester him for whiskey through the early morning.

Geronimo bade Mestas’ wife make them a meal. She prepared tortillas and mutton, but Geronimo rejected the mutton and demanded they kill and cook a two-year-old sorrel colt that belonged to Jimmie Stevens. This was done, and the Apaches feasted.

The warriors then abruptly disarmed the herders and tied them up. Mestas was wearing a finely embroidered white Mexican shirt. Geronimo fancied it and demanded that the Mexican take it off and hand it over. Mestas must have understood then what was coming…

Geronimo ordered his men to run a rope through the bonds that tied the sheepherders and lead them up a hill outside of camp and kill them. Bylas objected vigorously to this treachery.

“Why would you want to kill these people after they fed you and you promised to harm no one?”

Chatto and Naiche agreed, noting that they would have lost men if they had had to attack the camp. They urged Geronimo to pay Mestas’ wife for the meal and get on with their mission.

Naiche, son of Cochise.

Naiche wielded considerable gravitas as the son of the great Chiricahua chief Cochise, and his words carried weight. Geronimo backed down and rescinded his order. But then Chihuahua — perhaps the most potent warrior among the whole dangerous crew — spoke up. He reminded Geronimo that the herders were Mexicans, and Mexicans had always lied to and slaughtered their people. This was a goad to Geronimo, whose young wife, and children, along with his mother, had been killed in a Mexican Army raid on their Rancheria back in 1851.

The death sentence was back on. Chatto and Naiche did not approve, but they did not intervene. Geronimo’s men led the herders away and slaughtered them in the most cruel fashion. According to one account, a boy was thrown on a cactus to writhe in pain for a while before they bashed his head in with a rock. One man had his head split by an ax. The Apaches stoned the women to death and stabbed the men. One man managed to wriggle out of his bonds and make a run for it. The Apaches had to shoot him. Six herders, Mestas, his wife, and two little children were dead.

The killing seems to have made Geronimo manic. He stormed up to Bylas, who was sitting with Chatto and Naiche, and threatened to kill the White Mountain man. Chatto and Naiche weren’t having it. Geronimo raged, and Naiche told his nephews to shoot him if he said another word. As historian Edwin R. Sweeney puts it, Geronimo lost his voice.

The killers discovered that they had missed one — a nine year old kid. Geronimo told them to kill him, too. This was too much for a young warrior named Jelikine, a Mexican kid who had been captured and adopted by the Chiricahua, and had proved to be a stalwart. Jimmie Stevens related what happened next, as described to him by Bylas:

Jelikine grabbed up a spear and put the blade to Geronimo’s chest. He told him that he was a brave warrior and had always done as Geronimo asked him, but he would not permit the killing of the boy.

“The people you have killed here today are my people and something, maybe their God, has spared this boy’s life. Do not harm him or I will kill you. I will kill any man who harms the little boy. You are many and I am but one, but I will take many with me when I go.”

Geronimo backed down, and the boy, a son of Mestas, was spared. The Chiricahua forced the White Mountain Apaches, with the Mestas boy in tow, to accompany them away from the massacre site, but they let them go as the moved on to the San Carlos Reservation, where they would scoop up Loco’s people and make another run for the border. Geronimo was wearing his new embroidered shirt.

The Chiricahua made it safe to Mexico, but they immediately ran into catastrophe. A story for another time…

*This account relies mainly on that of Edwin R. Sweeney in his magisterial From Cochise to Geronimo: The Chiricahua Apaches, 1874-1886. Journalist Danny Haralson of the Eastern Arizona Courier also offers a detailed account.

The Birthplace of Country Music Museum in Bristol Tennessee/Virginia is hosting a special exhibit on the old ballads that crossed the sea from the British Isles to Appalachia, featuring the fantastical art of Charles Vess.

Ballads – folk songs that tell a story through narrative verse – have been passed down through English, Irish, and Scottish oral traditions and continue to echo throughout the Appalachian Mountains today. Ballads have long captured the hearts and imagination of songsters, storytellers, and listeners, including award-winning illustrator Charles Vess. In 1993, Vess was inspired to illustrate the ballads he had loved to listen to for so many years. He worked with several award-winning and ballad-loving fantasy authors to develop scripts and compiled a series of beautifully illustrated comics, which he published in The Book of Ballads.

The exhibit, Charles Vess: The Book of Ballads, features seven ballads reimagined by some of the greatest fantasy writers of our time. The featured comics, including “The False Knight on the Road” by Neil Gaiman, “Thomas the Rhymer” by Sharyn McCrumb, and “Barbara Allen” by Midori Snyder, are an excellent introduction to traditional ballads for those not yet familiar and a special treat for those who already are. The exhibit also explores the tradition of ballad singing in Appalachia and traces the origin of each ballad and its journey through time. After all, singing is one way to keep ballads alive, art is another.

Deuce and I connected many years ago through a mutual love of the works of Robert E. Howard — who was himself something of an aficionado of the old Appalachian ballads.

FP readers know I am deeply enamored of suchlike, the Fennario described by Robert Hunter as:

“…a peculiar place where Appalachia met immigrant Scottish, English, Welsh and Irish folk traditions, to my mind the mythic territory of Fennario, where Sweet William courted Pretty Peggy-O with such romantically disastrous consequences.”

How I love that peculiar place…

It is most gratifying to see Fennario brought to the foreground in the birthplace of country music. Bristol, which is bisected by the Virginia/Tennessee state line, was the site of a series of 1927 recording sessions featuring the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers, regarded as the Big Bang moment of modern country music. The town features in Steve Earle’s bad-tooth hillbilly murder ballad, where the narrator kills his rival for the love of Carrie Brown.

I shot him in Virginia and he died in Tennessee…

I have long appreciated Vess’ work, and I have a copy of the Book of Ballads… somewhere…

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Frederick Courteney Selous is one of the avatars of Frontier Partisans. There’s a reason he’s up there on the masthead, and he was one of the biographical chapters in my Warriors of the Wildlands. Discovering the story of the great African hunter, naturalist, writer, warrior, and conservationist in my early 20s (thanks Peter Hathaway Capstick!) introduced me to Frontier Partisan history as a global phenomenon.

His career mirrored those of the Long Hunters and Mountain Men I was fascinated by from childhood, carried the themes into the 20th Century, and led me into a deep study of the frontiers of Southern Africa.

Frederick Courteney Selous (1851-1917)

The Origins Foundation Podcast (formerly Blood Origins) has just released a two-parter that I can’t wait to dive into:

Most people have heard of Theodore Roosevelt — but far fewer know the extraordinary story of his close friend and legendary hunter-conservationist Frederick Courtney Selous. In this first installment of a two-part podcast series, historian, archaeologist, and returning guest Paul Hubbard joins Robbie [Kröger] to explore the life, influence, and conservation legacy of one of Africa’s most iconic figures. From early exploration and big game hunting to the foundations of modern conservation, Selous played a pivotal role in shaping how wildlife and wild places are protected today.

This episode dives into:

• The friendship between Frederick Selous and Theodore Roosevelt.

• The role of early hunters in shaping conservation policy.

• Selous’ expeditions across Africa and his lasting legacy.

• The historical roots of modern wildlife conservation.

• How hunting history continues to influence conservation today.

If you are interested in conservation history, African exploration, Theodore Roosevelt, or the truth about hunting’s role in protecting wildlife, this is a must-listen episode.

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A Jacob Dickert rifle made sometime between 1761 and the Revolutionary War. Rock Island Auctions..

Hawken Horse’s new single from the forthcoming Fringes of Freedom album has dropped. Kentucky Girl is a love song to a rifle…

More than 350 years after the death of legendary French musketeer d’Artagnan, his remains may well have been found under the floor of a Dutch church.

Jos Valke, who is deacon at St Peter and Paul Church in Maastricht, helped unearth the skeleton and is 99% certain that the remains belong to Charles de Batz de Castelmore, a close aide to France’s Sun King Louis XIV who was known as Count d’Artagnan.

D’Artagnan was killed during the Siege of Maastricht in 1673, but later immortalised in the adventure stories of Alexandre Dumas as a friend of the Three Musketeers.

His remains were long rumoured to have been buried in the church but no evidence has been found until now.

Whoops! I may have accidentally posted a gratuitous pic of Milady de Winter smoking a pipe. Sorry…

If you haven’t discovered Corb Lund’s music yet, fire it up. He’s in the Frontier Partisans x-ring.

We’ve got Sierra Ferrell, Steve Earle, Kaitlyn Butts, Shane Smith & the Saints and Turnpike Troubadours on the road ahead this spring and summer.

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POLITICO Magazine recently published an 18,500-word report on the 2005 Operation Red Wings, the disastrous mission that formed the basis of the memoir and movie Lone Survivor. This is well worth your time. R.M. Schneiderman and Ed Darack took years putting this together, and it is a good, hard — and fair and empathetic — look at how badly things can go awry in dangerous territory and terrain in the back-of-beyond — and how a military disaster can be glossed and romanticized.

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My brother and I drove past Vasquez Rocks on our loop from Los Angeles up to Wrightwood and back through the Mohave Desert last week. Of course that got me thinking about Tiburcio Vasquez — and this lecture by biographer John Bossenecker popped up on my feed.

Vasquez was a bandit boys, his horse was fast as polished steel…

Handsome and well-turned-out, he played guitar and seduced women wholesale at the same time he and a loyal gang carried out a spree of robbery and horse theft through Central and Southern California. He rode through places like Arroyo Seco and Big Tujunga Canyon where I hiked when I was a young feller.

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The Gold & Gunpowder YouTube Channel continues to deliver excellent pirate history content that puts buccaneering and the Golden Age into the commercial, political and ideological context of the 17th and 18th Century. The 17th Century was rife with radical ideologies that both sparked and grew out of the English Civil War, and the early 18th Century was shaped by the persistence of Jacobitism. This is great stuff.

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Yet one more Taylor Sheridan show is on the way — a direct spin-off from Yellowstone. The further adventures of Beth and Rip.