As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter as this matters to me.
I often read of California Joe who was one of the noted scouts of the plains along with Wild Bill, Buffalo Bill and before all Kit Carson and Jim Bridger. He was always a mystery in being brave and hardy, with a bit too much of a taste for hard drink, and always friendly Joe was about as unknown as warmth in winter.
I came across something though in the Boone and Crockett stories on hunting in the mid 19th century which really required sharing for the information it provided. It had to do with a hunting trip to the Black Hills in the spring of 1875. The reason for this being of any value is that in 1874 General Custer headed the first expedition to the Black Hills which confirmed gold, and due to a fall out with President Grant, as Custer arrested his son for being drunk on the trip, Col. Richard Irving Dodge was to head the 1875 expedition to the Hills in that summer.
The Black Hills were by that time quite loaded with civilians and Dodge handed them masterfully as they were not supposed to be there. It was though this spring hunt in which a Kentucky greenhorn rode into a camp of hunters which were turned back by the military, that the kid ran into another Kentuckian who would vouche for him, and this was California Joe.
Joe had just pulled a rack of ribs out of the coals and was eating heavy on them, when he laid the law down about the kid from Kentucky being welcomed, as the hunters thought the was a spy from the fort to keep tabs on them, and in that Joe actually revealed who he was.
California Joe was named Mose Milner from birth, and was from near Danville, Kentucky. Tragically, Joe would be murdered in some mud hole of a gathering in 1876, and like most of his kind never produced offspring of that rare race of Plainsmen.
For his own reasons, he never told anyone his real name or where he came from. That was sort of the reality of the boarderlands, in people just left wife and kids, or some kind of trouble, and started out fresh in the west.
Libby Custer mentioned that John Burkman who cared for their horses seemed to have more of a story in a bald patch on his head which spoke of things. Doc Holiday had a falling out of a love affair with his cousin. People just came west and disappeared and Joe probably had something back in the states too painful or too pressing to deal with.
That is the million dollar knowledge in this in who Joe was. I use "get the bulge on" as that was about as common phrase as Libby Custer saying, "that was Choctaw to them", which was "that was Greek to me", but the bulge is a phrase sort of lost, except showing up in Wyatt Earp in Kurt Russell using the phrase.
You only find this information in reading the old texts, because some hunter or some pilgrim just happened to be at the right place to stumble upon Buffalo Bill as my great Grandfather did. It all gets lost though unless some nosy kid is poking around a mink set he has no business reworking.
Mose Milner from Kentucky was California Joe and all he was just happened to die with him. May he rest in peace.
Oh by the way, Joe rode mules by choice. Just adding the information as he was an astute man.
agtG
