Self-portrait by Kid Russell
With the Frontierado Holiday coming up in just over a month and a half, Balladeer’s Blog decided to whet readers’ appetites with this look at a gritty cable western series based on the real-life gunslinger turned artist Kid Russell (Charles Marion Russell).
As always, Frontierado is about the myth of the American West, not the grinding reality. This ties it in with Balladeer’s Blog’s examinations of myth and folklore and the ways in which the human tendency toward embellishment crafts everything from religious lore to heroic legends.
Even in the 1800s the exploits of real-life gunslingers were being exaggerated in Dime Novels or overblown newspaper accounts to the degree that the surviving tales of Western figures often bear little resemblance to their actual lives. Television added another layer of distortion as the need for weekly stories saw Western shows presenting the likes of Doc Holliday, Wild Bill Hickok, Bat Masterson and many others in adventures that dropped all pretense of being based on anything “real.”
Even a figure like Annie Oakley, who actually saw no action against outlaws, was depicted fighting crime out west in a weekly series. In that same spirit here’s my presentation of how the framework of fictional adventures can be used to familiarize modern audiences with occasional facts about the adventurers themselves.
KID RUSSELL (Cable Series) – “Before he made the art, he LIVED it!” would be the kind of eye-rolling advertising tagline that one could picture being used for a show like this. I’m not implying any disrespect to Kid Russell or his artistic legacy. Regular readers of Balladeer’s Blog are familiar with my regard for the man. (FOR MY LOOK AT THE KID RUSSELL LEGEND CLICK HERE )
I can’t help but speculate that the Kid’s fondness for “windies” would make him smile at the kind of concentrated embellishment I’m about to bring to his real-life adventures. Russell’s famously coy line about how he “… never said how law-abiding I was or wasn’t” made many of the wildest legends about the man seem like there might be more than a kernel or two of truth to them. Continue reading
PART TWENTY: I need to interrupt my look at the 1910-1917 and 1919-1922 Fool Killer items for this time around. In a surprising development Balladeer’s Blog was contacted by THE actual Fool Killer. Using Jimmy Neutron-level science I determined that this correspondent was indeed the actual supernatural figure who had been at large in America since the 1830s. 
Coming to you as I wander in search of fools to kill, as usual a murder of crows following in my wake to feast upon the ample corpses I leave behind me in my travels.
PART EIGHTEEN: In this issue the Fool Killer stated his mission in his newest incarnation (Or “regeneration” we could say with tongue in cheek.) was “the general overturning of all established institutions of every kind.” … “The Hour of Doom has struck for many of this old world’s pet institutions.” Quite a long way from his 1830s mission of driving the Devil out of the Tennessee Hills and killing fools who tried stealing the “hidden” gold of the Melungeons!
PART SIXTEEN: James Larkin Pearson, poet and newspaper man, carried on the Fool Killer tradition from 1910 to 1917, then again from 1919 to 1929. Pearson’s fellow North Carolinian Charles Napoleon Bonaparte Evans had written the Fool Killer Letters of the 19th Century so it’s appropriate that another Tar Heel continue the lore for so many years of the 20th Century. 
In August of 1917 Pearson’s nationwide publication called The Fool-Killer changed its title and format because of America’s entry into World War One four months earlier. That change from the hard-hitting satire of Fool Killing was made to show solidarity while the war raged. 
PART TWELVE 
Now we’re in the 1880s and 1890s. The Fool Killer lore of the Melungeon people was absorbing traces of Mormon influence from the wider culture. The Melungeons were NOT Mormons but their Fool Killer tales took on pseudo-religious elements from Mormon lore, like the notion that the Melungeons may be even older than the previously held legends about pre-Columbian Portuguese explorers or ancient Phoenicians. 
PART NINE: This installment draws to a close the opening era of Fool Killer lore but we have much, much more to go after this. (At left is the figure riding a train’s cowcatcher like he often did to get around.)
PART EIGHT: The previous installment dealt with the last surviving Fool Killer Letter by Charles Napoleon Bonaparte Evans, Editor of the Milton Chronicle. That letter was from February of 1879. 
In 1862 the Southern Literary Messenger quoted from a Milton Chronicle Fool Killer Letter, but without an exact date and without the whole context it’s not sufficient to count it as an 8th surviving letter. 
Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of the many facets of Fool Killer lore.
Holmes then set out to snuff the devious old bachelor and also came across another young man who had been played false by the same woman who victimized the wagon driver. This suitor had swum the Hyco River in North Carolina, risking pneumonia at that time of year, just to see the girl. The Fool Killer advised him about the belle’s true nature and gave him a token swat for being suckered in by that designing woman and risking his life for her. 
The trio tried to persuade Butts into joining them in a suicide pact to show their faith before the imminent end. When Charles refused, the three drunken apocalypticists grew hostile and implied they might take him with them against his will. The Fool Killer intervened with his club/ walking stick/cudgel and his set of Bowie knives and slew the three loons. 
PART SIX: The sixth surviving Fool Killer Letter. (See Part One for an explanation.) 
The Fool Killer complained that for every fool he slew with his club/ walking stick/ cudgel or his set of Bowie knives (each blade inscribed with the words “Fool Killer”) three more fools sprang up to take their place. He said that fools were as plentiful as grains of sand on the beach. 
Holmes’ body count in this letter started off with assorted nouveau riche snobs of the Gilded Age, whom he condemned as would-be aristocrats. The Fool Killer struck down these formerly poor people who became wealthy and then put on airs, snubbing friends and relations who were not as well off and forbidding their daughters to even be seen dancing with “mechanics” (the term used in the actual 1877 letter). 
PART FIVE: The fifth surviving Fool Killer Letter. (See Part One for an explanation.) 
This letter has Jesse Holmes claim he is waking up from a nap begun AFTER the Civil War ended. Previous letters had the Fool Killer begin his hibernation in 1861 or 1862, motivated by disgust at the fools who brought on the Civil War. Under that initial timeline Holmes emerged from his hibernation around 1870, dressed in up to date men’s fashion, to resume his killing spree by preying on Ku Klux Klansmen and northern Carpetbaggers alike. 
We’ll probably never know and may be giving it more thought than Charles Evans himself did. So, on to the murders that the Fool Killer confesses to in this letter. 