Eugene D. Fleharty

Death on the Western Frontier is another book picked up on a recent trip through Kansas which I just got around to reading. Accounts like this are part of a tradition, including Wisconsin Death Trip, and Death in Yellowstone.


Death in Yellowstone recounts some legitimate tragedies, but is mostly stories of natural selection in action on those who were under the impression that Yellowstone was a sort of theme park (my personal favorite being the young man who exclaimed “I bet that water isn’t that hot!” and took a flying leap into a boiling spring. He lost).


Wisconsin Death Trip is just plain weird; the authors build on the folk belief, prevalent in the late 19th century, that cities were places of evil while small towns and farms were virtuous; this is refuted by extracting stories of insanity, murder, suicide and general mayhem from the preserved archives of the Black River Falls, Wisconsin, newspaper.


Death on the Western Frontier, also compiled from newspaper clippings, exhibits some of the same strangeness and grim humor. Kansas, the white-bread heart of American today, was quite a different place in 1875 and there were all sorts of ways you could find yourself on the wrong side of a coffin lid if you were careless. Kansans were thrown from horses, burned alive in grass fires, frozen to death in blizzards, shot by accident or on purpose, poisoned by strychnine, drowned in flash floods, lost arguments with Native Americans, and generally found so many different ways to meet the Reaper that it’s surprising anybody survived. The authors don’t do much in the way of commenting, leaving the articles to explain themselves – which they often do in grand style, given the traditions of small town journalism. So if you want accounts of a man claiming self-defense after dismembering his opponent with an axe, or disagreements over who had the right to enjoy the charms of a particular lady (loser got three .44 balls in the forehead, winner fled to New Mexico, lady moved to Kansas City), this will do it for you.… (mehr)