Wild Bunch historian visits Wyoming from England
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TEN SLEEP – “Butch Cassidy is definitely an obsession for me,” remarked English historian Michael Bell, while on a research tour of Wyoming’s various record archives. “If there’s a cure for it, I haven’t found it yet.”
For Bell, a resident of Birmingham, West Midlands, England, and the author of 15 in-depth articles and the book “Incidents on Owl Creek: Butch Cassidy’s Big Horn Basin Bunch and the Wyoming Horse Thief War,” the journey to track the Wyoming outlaw’s early years has brought him to the United States 30 times, with 25 trips to the Cowboy State since 1979. During that time, Bell spends countless hours in the archives and records rooms of state depositories, libraries, county courthouses, and museums, digging for any clue to fill in the lost hours and minutes of members of the infamous “Wild Bunch.”
“With the Internet, you can buy a book, read old newspapers, and explore family histories with the push of a button, which was unheard of when I first started researching,” noted Bell, “but there is still really nothing like actually digging through tax records and old letters that have remain untouched for tens of years, and finally finding something of note. A-ha … there you are, I finally found you.”
While other historians focus on the outlaw years of Robert Leroy Parker, alias Butch Cassidy, Bell prefers to investigate the years prior to Butch’s time in prison for alleged horse theft, when the young cowboy was well-known as an honest hand at various Wyoming ranches. “Whereas the Johnson County War was political and class struggle that really dominated the headlines at the time, the horse thief activity in Wyoming at the same time was actually quite broad and involved a unique band of characters,” said Bell.
Through his research, Bell has managed to connect a wide list of Wyoming, Colorado and Utah characters to the early industry of wholesale stock theft, and the sometimes violent conclusions of such a dirty business. “Where the Johnson County war had definite lines drawn, between wealthy cattlemen and homesteaders, the horse thief circles really didn’t care,” remarked Bell. “They didn’t care who they stole from, including each other.”
Bell’s infatuation with the American West, like most western historians, began with a steady diet of television westerns. “Growing up with only two television channels [BBC1 and BBC2] I was totally engaged with the American westerns; “Rawhide” and “Wagon Train” and others,” recalled Bell.
In 1969, Bell was introduced to Butch Cassidy after viewing the film “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. “I really became infatuated with the idea of this person and his adventures,” said Bell, “and I after I visited the U.S. in 1979 as a graduate student, and picked up a few books on the subject, I was hooked.”
Since his introduction to the story of Butch Cassidy, Bell has made visiting the U.S. for research a regular event, returning to Wyoming in particular over and over. “Being in the actual places, whether it’s a building or an open field where a certain event occurred, really gives a bit of context to the history,” noted Bell. “It’s like a very large jigsaw puzzle, and each time you gain more perspective and find another piece.”
For Bell’s wife and daughter back home, the infatuation is encouraged, although regarded playfully. “I’ll be in my office working away, my thoughts trapped somewhere in the early American West, when my daughter will poke her head in and ask if I’m spending time with my ‘Dead Americans’,” laughs Bell. “I just answer, ‘Why yes, dear…what else?’ I’m sure this will go on the rest of my life, and by the time I’m 107 I’ll still only know a little more about Butch Cassidy than when I started out. It’s impossible to learn it all.”
Bell is currently completing a tour of Cheyenne, Laramie, Buffalo, Ten Sleep, Cody and Thermopolis before a stop in Washington, D.C., to visit the National Archives.
