The Border and the Buffalo

The Border and the Buffalo: An Untold Story of the Southwest Plains by John R. Cook (1938)

Edited by Milo Milton Quaife

Fascinating first person accounts by John Cook (most of the book), Sol Rees (one chapter), and Wild Bill Kress (one chapter).

Cook was in Kansas during the Civil War, and claims to have met Quantrill.

John Cook tried his hand at prospecting, then became a skinner, and finally crawled up the food chain to be a buffalo hunter.

Cook once wandered away from a camp in the wilderness with neither a gun nor a knife, became lost, starved for days, and almost died. He lost a shoe in quicksand while crossing a river. A very odd anecdote. [Would an experienced frontiersman really do this?]

Cook relates the tale of Wrong Wheel Jones. Jones broke a wheel on his wagon, recalled seeing another broken down wagon miles back on the trail, and went back to salvage a wheel. When he got there, he realized that the same wheel was broken on the abandoned wagon. Without a wheel, he returned to his own wagon in disgust. It was only much later that he realized that all of the wheels were interchangeable. [If Jones was really this stupid, how could he ever have survived to reach this point?]

Cook was a participant in the incident known as "The Staked Plains Horror" where buffalo soldiers died of thirst.

Cook makes it clear that the buffalo hunters were not only in it for the money, but also to cut the means of support out from under the tribes and thus make the frontier safe for settlement by whites.

Cook seems defensive about the criticism that the buffalo hunters were the dregs of the frontier. Cook feels that they were fine men doing their patriotic duty.

Cook refers to killing an Indian as making him "a good injun."

Cook once scalped an Indian before he was dead. The Indian asked Cook to wait, but Cook was in a hurry.

The chapter by Sol Rees contains an anecdote concerning the widow of Kit Carson. It would be interesting to find out who the woman really was, since Kit Carson's wife died before Carson did.

It is alleged that Zane Grey's novel The Thundering Herd was based on Cook's memoirs.