Talk:Pleasant Valley War

Omission

The entire two sections on the Wells Outfit and Frederick Burnham have one glaring omission. If Wells and Burnham, by extension, were drawn into the feud, on whose side did they act? Both Grahams and Tewksburys were cattle ranchers, so the directive by the creditors to drive away the opposition's cattle does not clarify the issue. Who were the creditors? Grahams? Or Tewksburys? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.189.21.155 (talk) 15:23, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm sad to say that this question, over three years later, still hasn't been answered. Anyone have access to the sources to add a bit more clarifying language? Ljpernic (talk) 23:32, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Lee Hanchett's book about this is excellent and explains who was really behind the war. Tax records show that before the war, sheriff Mulvenon was very poor but after the war was fairly well off. Mysterious individuals payed for Ed Tewksbury's two murder trials in Phoenix. Research makes it obvious that the money behind the Tewksbury faction was the Phoenix banker, Daggs, who wrote in a letter to his daughter: "They say that war is hell and I should know because the Pleasant Valley war cost me $100,000." At that time this was a huge quantity of money. Senor Cuete (talk) 01:40, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Ah, excellent, so the Wells group supported the Tewksburys. This is hinted at in the article (somewhere it talks about them joining the losing side of the war), but I will add a little bit to make this connection clearer.

Also, thanks for pointing out the attach/attack mistake. If you (or anyone else) don't object, I'm going to change "...and sent two deputies to attach his cattle" to "...and sent two deputies to seize his cattle". That way we can have others avoid the same confusion that I had in just thinking it was a typo (since many, like me, might not be familiar with this terminology). Thanks -- Ljpernic (talk) 09:43, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Actually, rereading the text, I'm still not clear (sorry to be dense). So, the Daggs brothers told the Wells outfit to support the Tewksburys or have their sheep seized in lieu of their debt, but instead they killed a deputy who confronted them and ran off? If they refused to join the Tewksburys like the Daggs wanted them to, then for which side did they fight where "For the Wells outfit it became a sheer waste of human life in a struggle without honor or profit in another man's feud, and seemingly without end"?Ljpernic (talk) 09:57, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

It's been a long time since I red Lee Hanchett's book about this. I don't know if the Daggs brothers told the Wells brothers to support the Tewksburies. This article is not great and someone needs to clean it up a lot. I recommend that you read Hanchett because it is newer and is based on research such as court testimony, tax records and the letters, etc. of Daggs. Some people think that this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cowboy.jpg is a picture of posse member (John)Fetcher Fairchild on his way to the war. Senor Cuete (talk) 16:35, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Neutrality

The tone of this article seems rather inappropriate for an encyclopedic article. It frequently engages in editorializing and subjective judgements. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:39, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Burnham's account does not deserve the prominence given it in the article.

Burnham's story is colorful and of the times, but is hardly the template upon which to frame this article. Eliminate it and his photo completely and offer his book as further reading. NO historians of this conflict have ever given it such prominence (this is the first I've ever seen of his face) and thus this article is not only off the track, but it is totally out of whack. More about Globe than Pleasant Valley. Globe was a hell hole, too. Politics and mining polluting the typical deadly fare of a rustling range war; see Clara Woody.

My own GGpa was on the Tewksbury's side; George Wilson, an orphaned minor. Ed Tewksbury worked for George's legal guardian/brother-in-law, George Newton, at Wilson's Ranch. This is called the "Middleton Ranch" made famous for the Apache raids that persuaded that family to sell to ours, and then this gunfight in 1887. Newton and JJ Vosburg hired Tom Horn to take care of the Flying V nearby after the shepherd got shot. The Grahams and those Blevins rustlers were clearing the valley for themselves after the Blevin's pa went missing (Tom Horn's work?) We'd already lost a breed mare to that crew and the court had proven itself useless. We stood our bloody ground. Forrest's "Arizona's Dark and Bloody Ground" was the most famous of the older books and leans on the Youngs and Hashknives to tell a Graham biased tale.

Don Dedera's book, "A Little War of Our Own," is the most comprehensive, but reads like a jumbled jewelry box for all its darling details. Perhaps Clara Woody's book with Milton Schwartz, "Globe, Arizona" is the best source as it's Part Two is titled "WAR IN PLEASANT VALLEY" and attempts chronology; however, she is a Tewksbury partisan. So am I.

But, whether a Graham, Blevins or a Tewksbury sider, NONE would say Burnham's is the story to lead the way. It's a box canyon with a fancy shmancy name like Remington's that deserves to get shot down. Dedera's book is the best for citations, and it's footnotes and bibliography are essential to any student of this war. Hanchett's books are good, but he's a Graham sider looking for conspiracies to excuse the Grahams and Blevins' wrong doings.

Take down that folly of a detour and restore the story to its established glory. It was a bloody hell that left your palms stained with spots if you got out alive. Burnham only WISHED he was involved, the blood sucking profiteer. He was just cashing in on the nationally recognized horror of it all. Participants kept their mouths shut for a reason.

68.228.220.88 (talk) 14:50, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Burnham was a participant in the feud and his eyewitness accounts give readers significant insights into the earliest phases of the conflict. Historians R.R. Money, J.P. Lott, and P. van Wyk have all researched this conflict and support Burnham's inclusion. The books you cite focus on later and more notorious phases of the conflict that took place well after Burnham escaped from Globe.

But there is legitimate discord over which family brought Burnham into the feud. When Burnham published Scouting on Two Continents in 1926, some members of the feud were still living and Burnham said he did not wish to mention names that might re-kindle the conflict. According to Lott, Burnham was drawn into the conflict by his association with Fred Wells and his family, but Money states that it was his association with the Gordon Family. Burnham was friends with both of these families in Globe, so it could have been either. However, in the undated manuscript of his memoirs, Burnham explicitly mentions his friendship with young Tommy Gordon and his family within the context of the feud. To help clarify this issue, I can add this footnote to the text. In addition, I would also agree that we could substitute Wells for Gordon in this article.

Ctatkinson (talk) 16:34, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Gordon or Wells, neither name means anything to me. The only folks arguing about those names must descend from their own families. JJ Vosburg was the agent for the Wells Fargo in Globe, but I've never read a word about these folks except for the wasted time spent researching that side canyon. The Pinal Mountains are way south of this action, Jackson. Maybe these scrabblers worked for Pringle south of Newton's drift fence, but Newton's range lay to the north on the reservation east of the Sierra Anchas. These licenses to graze the Apache ranges were VERY valuable, which is why some suggest Pringle was shot at Vosburg's, and Newton was to disappear later, if we can believe the papers.

I appreciate telling this story fairly is a multifaceted gem of a hard rock to crack, but to lay down as our foundation the worst sold side of this tale suggests a detail to protect the truly guilty. It makes the entire effort a waste of time to balance. I would do so if it were firmly biased (and this does come off very hard on the Tewksburys in the classic racist way of those times) but this is really beyond repair. No one even knows who he's talking about!! I may hang a Disputed on it one day, but I've learned to save my conflicts for better purposes. This is lacking in most of the finest characters and their details. Many statements are simply wrong, such as the assertion the Grahams showed the Tewksburys to Pleasant Valley. Errors such as these are so numerous, I can't even suggest a salvage. I would enjoy participating in a telling which takes in many PsOV as this conflict was a microcosm of most complex conflicts, economic, political, with tribes, bands, and clans clashing against others' interests as well. The star of the whole show is the Tonto. The land that drove men to murder many more times than these, just ask the Apaches.

Sheep war

"The conflict was commonly thought to be an Arizona sheep war". Since this is wrong, why not delete it? Why would it be necessary to include someone's ignorance about this subject in an Encyclopedia? Shouldn't the article just state the facts: that it was a territorial conflict between two families, over grazing land? Senor Cuete (talk) 15:09, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

I think it is good to include that it was commonly thought to be a sheep war. Sheep wars were at that time relatively common, so the assumption was natural. That it wasn't true doesn't mean it isn't part of the factual history of the Pleasant Valley War. As an analogy, it would be like writing an article on the history of Mars and not including the fact that people used to think Martians had cities there tucked away in canals. Hilariously ignorant, but still part of the history. That's my opinion, at least. Ljpernic (talk) 16:16, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

Actually unattributed statements like that aren't included in encyclopedic articles and are not allowed in a Wikipedia article as WP:WEASELWORDS. Senor Cuete (talk) 22:11, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

So you asked for opinions and then changed it anyway? Not worth fighting about, but poor form.Ljpernic (talk) 22:18, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

Generally changes aren't discussed in advance. This is unusually courteous for Wikipedia and text such as the WP:WEASELWORDS in the article, may be removed without comment. Senor Cuete (talk) 14:39, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Expansion

I have recently expanded half of the subsections and fixed the referenes.112.198.64.48 (talk) 18:38, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

Other images

There are other images available of participants in the war:

Fletcher Fairchild

Fletcher Fairchild was a member of Mulvenon's posse and later the first sheriff of Coconino County.

and

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Cow_Boy_1888.jpg#/media/File:Grabill_-_The_Cow_Boy.jpg

According to Arizona author Gladwell "Toney" Richardson, who wrote many historical articles and many dime novels and used pseudonyms like "Maurice Kildare", "The Cow Boy" is an unknown member of w:en:Yavapai County Arizona Sheriff John Mulvenon's posse which was sent twice in 1887 to intervene in the w:en:Pleasant Valley War. This is in a magazine. I'll look it up if anyone's interested. Senor Cuete (talk) 23:23, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

I have commented the "Cow Boy" image out for the moment. I tried to find that article online to read what Richardson said and was unsuccessful, but I just find it hard to believe that Grabill, who, during the time of the War, was working out of Sturgis in the Dakota Territory, would have taken photographs (or even a single photograph) of the Mulvenon posse in Arizona. Also, the Library of Congress file description identifies and the photo itself are identified only as "The Cow Boy". Would welcome further discussion about the photo. Thanks, Shearonink (talk) 18:47, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

You can't prove a negative, so you can't prove that Grabill wasn't in Arizona. As far as Toney Richardson is concerned, he's not just a reliable source, more like THE reliable source for Arizona history. The cited article meets Wikipedia's criteria for accessibility. It doesn't have to be on-line. You don't know that Grabill was in the southwest isn't the same thing as the fact that he wasn't. Actually according to the Sturgis Daily Record, he went on a trip all over the southwest at about the time this picture was taken and according to an article in the paper in Buena Vista, Colorado, he made a another trip over the west at that time. The article says that he was so sick he almost died and that his wife was rushing off to be with him in Cheyenne Wyoming. Before he was in Sturgis he had a studio in Buena Vista and the earliest picture in the Grabill collection is a picture of this. There is some discussion of the provenance of the picture here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_talk:The_Cow_Boy_1888.jpg. If you get the high resolution version of the "COW BOY" from the Library of Congress, zoom in on the face and compare it to the picture of Fletcher Fairchild, it's obvious that it's a picture of Fairchild. The real smoking gun is the protruding ears in both men. Of course this is original research and can't be in the article. I can't believe it is not a good enough reason to delete content that cites reliable sources so I'm un-commenting it. Senor Cuete (talk) 16:31, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

Say what? All I said was "I found it hard to believe" he traveled from Sturgis to Arizona. And I don't have to prove a thing re:this matter, if the information stays in the article then including verifiable proof (beyond one commentator's statement) that this person was in Mulvenon's posse should be included as well. And, yes, of course cited information does not have to be online - I did not say I only looked online did I? However, according to WP:VERIFY, the asserted information has to be verifiable. A single source, Richardson as "Maurice Kildare" in "a "Great West" magazine article (not that I'm sure it matters but Great West was somewhat of a comic book/pulp magazine), identifies the Cow Boy as "being an unidentified member of the posse" but the Library of Congress (surely also a reliable source) does not.

You are correct that you or me zooming in on a high-res version of this photo and personally assessing the protruding ears are being from a particular member of the posse (i.e. Fletcher Fairchild) would be original research. As to who/what this person is, in addition to Richardson/Kildare's identification as him being "a member of the posse", he has also been variously identified as a "Claude Stratford-Handcock" and/or "Fred Pierce" - there are probably other claimants I am unaware of. I think it might be best to possibly include both descriptors with notations, one for the LoC and one for Richardson/Kildare. Richardson's assertion is not completely verifiable and it does seem to me that there are competing claims as to who the Cow Boy is. All that information should be included within this particular article at the photo's caption here. Shearonink (talk) 17:59, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

Another source's statement: True West Magazine's info on Pierce/Fairchild. Shearonink (talk) 18:12, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

The LoC's not saying it's a posse member isn't the same thing as saying it's not. The fact that Pierce can't be found to have existed doesn't prove that he didn't. Grabill probably didn't travel from Sturgis, he probably traveled from Buena Vista, Colorado. Your statement that Great West is a comic/pulp magazine is your own attempt to cast aspersions on this source. Richardson stopped writing fiction at some time and began to write only history. For example the article that identifies the COW BOY as a posse member also includes testimony from the grand jury investigation of the shooting at the Perkins store, including the fact that posse members testified that Mulvenon ordered the posse to shoot the two victims and that they weren't resisting. As far as I know Richardson was never in Sturgis or Chicago, so how did Richardson get a copy of the COW BOY? Who knows? All of this is speculation and it will never be resolved to anyone's satisfaction but in the mean time a reliable source says that it's a posse member. Also your link to True West doesn't link to a page with information about Pierce/Fairchild. The text on the talk page of the photo can't be in an article because Wikipedia can't be used as a source for Wikipedia articles, especially talk pages. It's too bad that there's no article about Grabill. Many articles about Grabill can be found in historical newspapers for example search for Grabill in coloradohistoricnewspapers.org. Senor Cuete (talk) 20:21, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

There is a Grabill article on Wikipedia under John C. H. Grabill. It's probably worth reading if you are interested in this subject. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.244.28.47 (talk) 20:58, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

There is not a single link available to that information, it is a slideshow. Look at #71, thanks:

"#71 Clothed in Mystery

"This 1887 photograph is labeled as depicting Fred Pierce, a Wyoming cowboy, but he does not show up in the Wyoming census. Some think this cowboy resembles Fletcher Fairchild, a member of Yavapai County Sheriff John Mulvenon’s posse, which was sent in 1887 to intervene in Arizona’s Pleasant Valley War. - Courtesy Robert G. McCubbin Collection"

Re: "Great West" - I was making no attempt to cast aspersions, I am remarking that Great West could possible be seen as an unreliable source because most people would look at the various Great West comic-book style covers/bindings and make assumptions, that is all. I think including verifiable/well-sourced reference/s to back up the various opinions (plural) as to who the Cow Boy could be is prudent. When I am editing Wikipedia I only care about the verifiable truth, I have no particular axe to grind for or against in this matter.

The LoC only states "unidentified" - nothing about the circumstances, nothing about the locale, I'm not sure but is there even a specific date? When I can figure out the coding I will include a (nested?) note as to the various identifications of the Cow Boy along with the sources - people can do their own research and make up their own minds. For Wikipedia to give a stated opinion even in a caption (with no further explanation) within an article that relies on a single source and an image that is there is some controversy about does not give readers the full story. Shearonink (talk) 21:13, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

Fred Pierce does not appear in either the 1880 or 1890 census of Wyoming. Some census records from this period for South Dakota were destroyed in a fire. A search of newspapers in Wyoming from this period reveals no mention of Pierce. A search of the paper in Deadwood mentions that about fifteen years later a Mr. and Mrs. Fred Pierce were staying at a the Apex hotel. Pierce had no brand registered in the Wyoming Territorial Brand book. This is puzzling for a "well known Wyoming cowboy". Senor Cuete (talk) 21:50, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

The LoC has a picture of Grabill's Assay office and photographic studio in Buena Vista: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/99613857/resource/. Senor Cuete (talk) 21:56, 24 May 2015 (UTC)

I have never heard a word about this man regarding the Tonto war, and I have three feet of references. If he came up, he was not found to be much of a source to those who really laid down the law men. Have you never read "A Little War of Our Own?" Ponderous, Little Joey, but exceedingly well cited. Wiki is not the space for details about outliers, outlaws. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TontoGal (talk • contribs) 14:57, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

By "this man", do you mean Fletcher Fairchild, John C. H. Grabill, or Gladwell "Toney" Richardson? The purpose of Wikipedia talk pages is to improve the articles. Complaining in weird sarcastic pseudo-English does little to further this goal. Yes, we have heard of 'A Little War of Our Own'. It should be cited in the references to the article. Personally I prefer Hanchette's book because is summarizes the other older books and adds new historical research. Senor Cuete (talk) 16:30, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

This is all OR, conjecture, and wishful thinking. Nothing in the photo's description says it was taken in AZ. 70.161.8.90 (talk) 01:30, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

AGAIN, where is the online ref that actually says this photo was taken in AZ not SD? 70.161.8.90 (talk) 00:25, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

References

Ed Sr/Jr, John Sr/Jr

The caption under the images of the Flying V cabin state that John Tewksbury Sr. lived there with his two wives, but we never hear of that person again. Later, a John Tewksbury Jr gets murdered next to a cabin. It is unclear which of the two, if any, is the child of the original Ed Tewksbury listed at the beginning of the body of the article.

As for Ed, he had a child named Ed, and yet nowhere in the article is it ever specified if an action is performed by Ed Sr. or Jr. Since ONE Ed was the sole male survivor of the family, that means that the other was killed, meaning neither of the two is irrelevant to the story, meaning we can't just assume that all mentions of Ed are to be understood as meaning Ed Sr.

Some clarity is needed. 37.163.192.27 (talk) 07:31, 30 December 2022 (UTC)