Rare Book Monthly
Book Catalogue Reviews - March - 2010 Issue
Buffalo, Custer, Wyoming and More from Old West Books
A photograph at the Custer Monument when it was still new.
One of the old buffalo hunters who changed his ways as he realized the great herds were disappearing was Charles Jesse "Buffalo" Jones. Instead, he became their savior. He captured young animals and placed them in protected areas, including Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake and the north rim of the Grand Canyon. He even tried breeding them with cattle for a while. Among the many admirers of his work was Theodore Roosevelt, who named Buffalo Jones the first game warden at Yellowstone Park. His friends included the more famous "Buffalo" man, Buffalo Bill. Item 38 is Colonel Henry Inman's 1899 biography, Buffalo Jones Forty Years of Adventure. It is actually incomplete as Jones lived another 20 years. $375.
Item 1 is an early (1881) photograph of the Custer Monument at the Custer Battlefield site. The photograph, taken just five years after Custer met his fate, came from David F. Barry. Barry was a notable western photographer, specializing in images of Indians and military figures. Among those he photographed was Sitting Bull, Custer's nemesis, and Custer himself in the days before his great miscalculation. $1,250.
Item 49 is the aforementioned Charles Siringo's most controversial work, Two Evil Isms. Pinkertonism and Anarchism by a Detective Who Knows, As He Spent Twenty-two Years in the Inner Circle of Pinkerton's National Detective Agency. Siringo was quite peeved at Pinkertons by this time as they had used his confidentially agreement to censor earlier writings about his adventures with the agency. Pinkertons had sent him on numerous undercover assignments, tracking down both criminals and unions, whose strikes the agency had been hired to break. Siringo's attack on anarchism as well as "Pinkertonism" was an indication that Siringo never became fond of unions (whose leaders he considered anarchists) any more than he liked the company hired to destroy them. Pinkertons got a court order to destroy this edition, and bought up as many copies shipped before the order as they could, but some escaped their grasp. This is a survivor. Published in 1915. $3,950.
Old West Books may be reached at 719-260-6030 or oldwestbooks@earthlink.net. Their website is www.oldwestbooks.com.
