Setting the Stage: The Wichita Mountains

View from the Cooperton Valley. Bud would have seen this on his first ride with Jesse.

The Wichita Mountains

Central to Bud Dalton's story are the Wichita Mountains. They're located in southwestern Oklahoma, running generally north and west from Lawton to Hobart and then scattered westerly toward Altus. None are very tall, but they are ancient and very rugged. They were a natural attraction for the Plains Indians, but also for the very first European visitors, which is really how the problem started. The first visitors were Spaniards, and they were looking for gold and silver.

The Spaniards and Prospectors

If you were to put yourself in the Spaniards' position, the Wichitas would have looked very inviting. The general terrain of the surrounding region is very flat, and some of those Spaniards are said to have gone insane on the Caprock in the Texas Panhandle. (Journal entries from Coronado's expedition in the 1540s indicate that some of the soldiers believed they were encroaching on hell. The flat and treeless terrain could not possibly be natural.) So, trudging across some very dangerous territory (not unlike Bud and Jesse's sprint from Mexico) to find mountains that, superficially, should hold the treasure they wanted would have been a God-send.

Naturally, they started digging. Some very old diggings on the western edge of the range (in the Greer County area described in Bud's story) are attributed to the Spanish explorers. They were noted by later explorers in the early 1800s and the resident Kiowa Indians credited the original Spanish. The new invaders grabbed those rumors and ran with them.

From then on, the Wichita's had a reputation for being rich in gold and silver. We'll explore that later...

Outlaws and the Army

The Wichitas were also interesting to real-life outlaws and the James-Younger Gang were no exception. They were known to have escaped there on many occasions, most importantly, at least most important to the young Bud Dalton, was when Jesse and Frank James hid the legendary Mexican Gold stash there. The mountains were part of the Indian Territory, so there was no law there. Given the terrain it would have been hard to catch anyone in the Wichitas even if there had been a lawman about.

But that was rarely the case. The Army, mostly through bad luck, was responsible for managing what happened in the Mountains. A string of small forts had been established in the mid 1800's to control the Indians and they were a pretty definite failure. Ft. Sill and Ft. Reno were founded at their present-day locations to replace the older forts and so the Army inherited the Wichita's in general in addition to their not-enviable job of controlling the Indians.

Cattle and cattlemen

Grass is still plentiful and put to use

The last batch of important players lurking about were the cattlemen. The cattle drives you see in old westerns were a real thing. During the Civil War the population of wild cattle in the Texas and New Mexico areas grew to astounding levels. While nearly worthless in Texas, those cattle were extremely valuable back east. Why not round up some of those wild cattle and drive them north the the rail heads in Kansas, then ship 'em to New York? That's exactly what happened.

The problem was the Indian Territory sitting between Texas and Kansas. Not really a problem, actually, more of an opportunity. After the long walk north, the cattle needed to rest and fatten up before getting sold in Kansas. The cattlemen simply made a deal with the various tribes to allow the cows to linger a few weeks, eating grass and adding pounds, before trudging the rest of the way to the rail-heads. Good deal for the Indians, good deal for the cattlemen.

Why would there be a problem? We'll explore that later, too...

Bud's table was set

The timing was unfortunate. As the Indian Territory was, reservation by reservation, being turned into the Oklahoma Territory, the Wichitas were the focus of a potential gold rush. When Jesse buried the Mexican Gold he thought he was hiding it in a safe place, but he really dropped it into the center a complicated political and military controversy. The prospectors wanted in, settlers wanted in, the Indians wanted everyone out, the cattlemen wanted to protect their grasslands, and the Army was simultaneously protecting the Indian land and enforcing the ever-changing laws governing the disappearing Indian Territory. The outlaws just went where ever they wanted.

Everything would come to a head in 1901, and the Wichita's were ground zero.