First, a bit of history:
"Willy Boy" was a local Paiute Indian, and the subject of a 1909 manhunt. It was later the story line for a movie entitled "Tell Them Willy Boy is Here" starring Robert Blake and Robert Redford.
The generally accepted facts of the case are that he attempted to "steal" a bride, and killed her father in the process when the father attempted to intervene. Other accounts say that he executed her father in his sleep, then kidnapped the girl. He later killed his unwilling fiance' when she became a hindrance to his efforts to elude a posse. Eventually he also shot members of said posse, and in the end took his own life by shooting himself in the head by actuating the trigger of his Winchester with his toe as the posse finally closed in.
Locally this is a topic of much controversy to this day. Predictably, The Modern White Apologists, legitimate latter day historians, local Indian lore and the first person accounts and news articles of 1909 all present conflicting versions of the story depending upon which group has the podium, though most seem to concede the above are the basic facts.
I'm not gunna weigh in on one side or the other, but having been a semi-ardent student of the events surrounding the Willy Boy manhunt, what has always impressed me most was the fact that he successfully evaded a posse of some of the best qualified law enforcement, citizens and trackers of his day, ON FOOT, with a presumably uncooperative and far less physically capable woman in tow, over hundreds of square miles of some of the most waterless and brutal terrain extant. For that, the man gains my undying admiration
So I thought I'd finally pay my respects to ol' Willy in person.....
"Willy Boy" was a local Paiute Indian, and the subject of a 1909 manhunt. It was later the story line for a movie entitled "Tell Them Willy Boy is Here" starring Robert Blake and Robert Redford.
The generally accepted facts of the case are that he attempted to "steal" a bride, and killed her father in the process when the father attempted to intervene. Other accounts say that he executed her father in his sleep, then kidnapped the girl. He later killed his unwilling fiance' when she became a hindrance to his efforts to elude a posse. Eventually he also shot members of said posse, and in the end took his own life by shooting himself in the head by actuating the trigger of his Winchester with his toe as the posse finally closed in.
Locally this is a topic of much controversy to this day. Predictably, The Modern White Apologists, legitimate latter day historians, local Indian lore and the first person accounts and news articles of 1909 all present conflicting versions of the story depending upon which group has the podium, though most seem to concede the above are the basic facts.
I'm not gunna weigh in on one side or the other, but having been a semi-ardent student of the events surrounding the Willy Boy manhunt, what has always impressed me most was the fact that he successfully evaded a posse of some of the best qualified law enforcement, citizens and trackers of his day, ON FOOT, with a presumably uncooperative and far less physically capable woman in tow, over hundreds of square miles of some of the most waterless and brutal terrain extant. For that, the man gains my undying admiration
So I thought I'd finally pay my respects to ol' Willy in person.....