Cullen Montgomery Baker (June 23, 1835 – January 1869) was a Tennessee-born Texas and Arkansas desperado whose gang terrorized Union soldiers and the civilians of Northeast Texas, Southwest Arkansas, and Northwest Louisiana. His Gang is alleged to have killed hundreds of people during the early days of the American Old West, in the years following the Civil War. However, these numbers are probably inaccurate, and the actual number is between fifty and sixty.
Baker was notorious for fighting in saloon brawls and his fiery temper. During one fight, he was knocked unconscious by a man named Morgan Culp, who hit him in the head with a tomahawk. This seemed to have shocked him into behaving, and it calmed his temper at least for a while. Baker has also been described as an earlier version of a gunfighter, though his preferred weapon was actually a double-barrel shotgun.
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Louis L'Amour, "The First Fast Draw". Cullen Baker was the hero and spent a lot of time perfecting his fast draw and then ran with some die-hard Confederates fighting the evil Yankees of the Reconstruction. I inherited my father-in-law's complete collection of Louis L'Amour Westerns and have read them to pieces. Wikipedia has its truth and I have mine.
ReplyDeleteSome of those places in Northeast Texas did not exist at the times listed -- Texarkana, Queen City, Bloomberg and New Boston. Maybe the incidents occurred "in the vicinity of what is now..." I find no reference to the 20th Infantry being in Texas or Arkansas at the time.
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