As we’ve seen in class, often times the most remarkable aspect of a legendary figure is how he or she died. In the instance of Sacagewea and Davy Crockett, their deaths defined their lives, and changing the details of their death could change their place in American history. As such, I decided to investigate Billy the Kid’s death and how it affected his legend.

I continued to use Siringo’s book and checked his details against an article written by Robert Utley on the subject. Utley also wrote Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life, so that may be a useful book to read in the coming weeks. Their accounts matched, with Utley’s providing a bit more detail and insight into the motivations and reactions of the people.

The story goes that after the daring escape I wrote about last week, the Kid lodged around Fort Sumner. Pat Garrett, after the murder of his two deputies, went out after him but was having trouble locating the criminal. One night, he went to a known associate of The Kid’s, Pete Maxwell, with the intention of asking about the Kid. However, as he was in the room, Billy the Kid himself stumbled in, having been startled by the sheriff’s deputies outside, and asked Maxwell who was out there. Noticing the sillouhette of Garrett on Maxwell’s bed, he started backing up, still asking “Quien es?”. Pat Garrett drew his pistol and fired two times, killing the Kid before he had a chance to retaliate (Siringo 128-132) (Utley 418-423).

There are several aspects that make this an entertaining story. The sheer amount of luck it took for both men to stumble into Maxwell’s room at the same time, for instance, would only seem plausible in a movie or a book. Also, the fact that Billy the Kid never fired a shot, despite having his pistol drawn before Garrett’s, lends some humanity to the tale of the ruthless killer (Utley 424). Utley proposes several reasons why the Kid might have refrained from shooting, ranging from unwillingness to shoot strangers to concern over hitting Maxwell. In any event, any of these interpretations softens the image of the Kid.

Utley makes the point that up until his escape and eventual death, Billy the Kid was nothing more than a sensationalized bandit who owed his fame more to the newspapers than to his exploits (424-426). Siringo doesn’t make the same claim, but he also spends much more time describing the final months of the Kid’s death compared to the rest of his life. So once again, a legendary figure becomes defined by his death.

The killing of the Kid manages to make him a tragic hero. Cut down in his youth by cruel fate, people might say. Billy the Kid’s life, capped by his death, allows the population to sigh and say “if only” before dropping the fantasy and returning to their lives.

Utley, Robert M. “Final Days of Billy the Kid.” New Mexico Historical Review 64.4 (1989): 401-26. Print.

Everyone in the public eye, from politicians to rappers, depends on self-promotion to keep their image strong. Harriet Tubman was the same way, though she had the facts to back up her reputation. Her efforts to spread her story helped her become one of the most recognized Americans of all time. Tubman played an important role in manufacturing her own legend by retelling her story, but she also set a precedent that invited others to use her memory, leading to widespread recognition and eventual mythical status.

Tubman, both during and after her active years, often accepted speaking engagements in order to retell the stories that made her famous to begin with. Milton Sernett cites a quote by Emma Telford, saying “as a raconteur, Harriet herself has few equals”, and he also discusses her dozens of appearances at abolitionist meetings (49). These accounts were spread mostly by mouth, creating an oral tradition which morphed and slowly grew to enshrine Tubman as the ‘Black Moses’, a term she created for herself (52). These stories morphed in the retelling, as oral traditions tend to do, and the lack of documented sources led to the vagueness that surrounds most legends.

Unlike most legends, however, the myths began to spread while Tubman was alive. Authors like Sarah Bradford, interested in telling Tubman’s tale, often floundered in the lack of verifiable details as early as 1869, a good 40+ years before Tubman’s death. Here is an instance where Tubman influence her own legend by not taking action. Being illiterate, she never read Bradford’s account, and if someone did question Tubman on the specifics (how many people she rescued, for instance), she did not send corrections to Bradford. This let Bradford’s account become standard source material, despite its less-than-stellar credentials.

Another aspect of Tubman’s behavior that accelerated her legendary status was her willingness to play along with whatever angle people demanded of her. As Jean Humez says, she “was a skillful strategist who could and did present herself in a variety of disguises as the situation demanded” (130). If suffragists wanted to praise the way she broke gender molds, she became General Tubman, the only woman to ever plan and lead a military operation (90). If the writers of civic texts needed a hero who exemplified bravery and conscious and the ideals of the American Revolution, she became Black Moses. This quality is a staple of legendary figures; for example Sacagawea experienced similar versatility after her death and John Brown could be described as either a violent abolitionist or a gentle and paternal figure to the slaves. The difference here, however, is that Harriet Tubman cultivated these images herself, and as such, practically invited others to use her in a similar manner. She became such a potent character because although her story was complicated, writers could distill her down into one of her many facets and use her as a symbol for whatever cause they needed.

One of the startling points that Sernett makes is that authors have purposefully manufactured Tubman into a legend in the years between her time and the present. In the first chapter he points out the incredible amount of children’s books written about her, especially in recent years (32). She has been canonized in civic texts aimed at children, with some authors even saying that her history is worthwhile because “she embodied the great affirmations the marked the birth of the republic” (31). Though she never expressed such feelings herself, her oral storytelling and willingness to fit any role made it easy for authors like Bradford to take her story and run with it.

Stories of John Brown’s kiss reveal little about the man himself, but they do shed light on the attitudes of Americans at the time.

By the time the first story of the kiss reached the press, Brown was already three days dead and resting in a coffin (Finkelman 50). Since, in all probability, the event did not happen, historians would be hard pressed to use it to analyze Brown’s character. The kernel of truth that may have sparked the tale comes from the idea that Brown possibly planted the kiss on a child inside the jail, before leaving for the gallows, but this only shows that Brown identified strongly with blacks, a fact well-established by his career as an abolitionist (Finkelman 52). It does indicate, however, his enthusiasm for martyrdom, as few acts are as symbolic as kissing a child on the forehead. Finkelman states that Brown was actively seeking martyrdom by the time his death was certain (45), to the delight of abolitionist leaders. These actions reveal Brown to be fanatically against slavery, but again, one only need look to Harper’s Ferry to draw the same conclusion.

The story, however, says much about those attempting to propagate it. Anti-slavery spokesmen were happy to have a martyr to rally around, but they needed to take the edge off of his radical, almost insane approach. The story of the kiss, though probably not conceived as such, was the perfect antidote to Brown’s numerous murders. Found on a little read page of New York Tribune, abolitionists quickly adopted it and modified it to suit their needs (Finkelman 50-51). Painters like Louis Ransom wasted no time in portraying Brown as a saint, adding quasi-halos and Biblical imagery to the scene (Trodd 12). The kindly, fatherly image showed a rational man going solemnly to his death, not the brazen zealot who initiated a bloody standoff at Harper’s Ferry. By the time it became truly prolific, everyone would consider that kiss the defining image of Brown’s legacy, rather than the slaughter of the settlers at Pottawatomie Creek. The eagerness with which abolitionists manipulated Brown’s image showed that by the time of his death, they only valued him for his symbolic value, nothing more.

The legend of the kiss filled several needs in the abolitionist movement: it provided a key sentimental picture to draw in supporters, and it was a calm conclusion to Brown’s violent legacy, allowing them to immortalize him without mentioning his moral shortcomings. It also assuaged the fears of the general public, since it proved that the abolitionists were not all about blood and rebellion. Their willingness to accept and retell this story shows that many of them may have been sympathetic to the movement in the first place. In the end, the story of the kiss is less important in John Brown’s life than it is in the anti-slavery movement as a whole.

After finishing the book this week, I looked up Charles Siringo’s entry in the American National Biography. As it turns out, Siringo’s life was similar to Billy the Kid’s, except the author opted to ally with organizations rather than strike out on his own. He spent a lot of time in the West and later joined the Pinkerton Detective Agency, where he had an illustrious career. The ANB sheds some light on his moral inclination, mentioning his involvement in voter fraud, undercover manipulation, and even murder. This lax moral code provides one reason why he had no problem describing Billy the Kid’s killings and robberies as grand and romantic. The ANB also mentions that he is relatively reliable in his writings. However, his career indicates a infatuation with a daring and romantic lifestyle, so this leads me to think that his account of Billy the Kid puts more emphasis on the dashing aspects of the criminal’s life. Furthermore, he had a distinct financial incentives in writing his books, much like Parson Weems or Walt Disney, and it’s likely that this influenced his accuracy.

Dealing with the actual substance of the book, the final chapters were much the same as the rest. They detail a few more of his escapades before his eventual capture, escape, and then death. The Kid’s jailbreak is a particularly interesting story. He evidently ate so little that his hands were able to slip out of the cuffs (115), and then he surprised and shot one of the guards. The other guard’s earlier quip about the shells in his shotgun (“I reckon the man who gets them will feel it” 114) came back to haunt him as the Kid shot him with the same gun. The outlaw then mounts his horse in front of a crowd and gallops off, leaving one man to say, “[I] could have killed him with [my] pistol, but [I] wanted to see him escape.” (119).

This seems to be a quintessential Billy the Kid story. He helps himself out of a jam with ironic flair, then rides off into the sunset with the support of the townspeople. I haven’t looked up any corroborating sources yet, but I would guess that if these events actually happened, Siringo sensationalized them into the account he presents. People like this story because behind all the killing and stealing, the Kid has a distinctly American set of values behind him: self-reliance, resourcefulness, a little showmanship, and popularity. Especially in Siringo’s romanticized account, readers find it easy to root for the Kid and difficult to sympathize with the lawmen. His story appeals to people because it provokes to the same emotions as the American Revolution.

Billy the Kid is a character in history who did not consent. He did not consent to laws, government, or even societal standards. All his murdering and rustling comes down to one thing: he lives like he wants to, not how others tell him to. But, as Dr. McDaniel pointed out in a comment, he manages to stick with his group while doing this. This cohesive-but-independent attitude makes him an ideal representative of the American ideals.

This lifestyle could not go on forever, though. Much like there is tension between the ideas of consent and freedom, the Kid’s ruthlessness and society were at odds. As much as the public tried, they could not ignore the trail of bodies the Kid left in his wake. They reconcile this, however, by remembering the bandit’s death. There seems to be some justice in the way the Kid died, gunned down by the sheriff. This makes the whole saga palatable by letting people say, ‘Well, he got what was coming for him in the end.” The Kid became legendary because his tale embodied so many American views: freedom, loyalty, but in the end, justice.