A sanguinary shooting affray occurred on Tombstone's Allen Street Sunday afternoon.ย
Now that the smoke has passed, it appears to have been a historical re-enactment gone awry. Nevertheless the gunfire taught an unintended history lesson quite accurately.
By now you've likely heard that one Tombstone gun-fighting actor shot a real bullet into another actor during a skit last weekend, part of the town's Helldorado Days festival. Tom Carter and Ken Curtis were faced off against each other, Marshal Bob Randall said, when Carter fired his gun at Curtis, who fell to the ground in all-too-real pain, a bullet having lodged in his body.
Curtis has since been treated at Banner University Medical Center, the bullet removed, and sent home in decent shape, Randall says. He says he will recommend that the Cochise County Attorney's Office charge Carter with aggravated assault.
This, of course, occurred in a town where the local economy sits atop the persistent memory of one historical gunfight โ what's widely known as the Shootout at the OK Corral. That incident is the centerpiece of the romantic Old West display that draws visitors to Tombstone, keeping its residents fed and housed.
In its first story of the incident, on Oct. 27 1881, this newspaper, then known as the Arizona Weekly Star, reported: "A sanguinary shooting affray occurred on Fremont street this afternoon." It was a big story: Future issues of the Star delved into the details of who was responsible for the shootout, which left three men dead, and editorialized on the necessity of the rule of law prevailing
The incident, which local historian Nancy Sosa calls "the gunfight on Fremont Street," occurred during a relatively short period, 1880-1882, of deep lawlessness in Tombstone, she said. I called her Tuesday to ask about Tombstone history and how it's presented there. Tucson and much of the Arizona territory had such periods from around 1875 to about 1890, she noted.
They may entertain us now, but they weren't good times.
Scanning microfilm of 134-year-old editions of the Star on Tuesday, I came across plenty of examples. Take this one published Sept. 8, 1881, six weeks before Tombstone's famous gunfight, under the headline "A HEINOUS CRIME":
"About ten days ago, the thirteen year old daughter of a man named Stroud, who lives in Ramsey canyon, came into her father's house, saying that as she passed the Mexican wood-choppers' camp, about a mile distant, she had been insulted by one of their boys. Without the slightest investigation, Stroud immediately raised a party of a dozen men โ all Americans, fully armed โ and proceeded with them to the wood-choppers' camp. There they gave orders that the boy should be seized and whipped.
"His shirt was taken from his back, and nine Mexicans with knotted rawhide thongs were compelled, under the penalty of death, to administer five lashes each with all their might. Among the number was the boy's father, who by dint of the most heart-rending entreaties, was allowed the privilege of giving his son only two hard lashes.
"As soon as the Americans left, the Mexicans started for Sonora, taking the boy with them, but before they had proceeded thirty miles on their way, the boy died from the effects of the whipping, and was buried almost on the line by the father and his friends.ย
"The girl now denies her first statement and says that she merely made the story up for fun. Great fears are entertained by the respectable portion of the community that the Mexicans will return in a body, seeking vengeance, and that if so the innocent will be made to suffer with the guilty....
"It is simply absurd for them to think that the Sheriff or any other officer of this county could equip and send out a necessary force of men to protect them from an expected attack. Better far that they should first exert themselves to exorcise the diabolical and disreputable elements from among them and then arm and make preparations to stand any attacks that may be made."
Lawlessness was a terrible, dangerous condition to live in.
Helldorado Days was established in 1929, not as a celebration of the lawless period but as a homecoming for Tombstone's pioneers, Sosa told me. Later, as Hollywood westerns became popular, the town embraced its fame, or infamy, and turned itself into the living history museum of the Old West that it remains, she said. Of course, the history told and acted out is often a romanticized version of the past.
(This evening, the four-day Tombstone Territory Rendezvous, a series of events and presentations on Old West history, begins at Wyatt's Coffee House in Tombstone.)ย
Tucson embraced its Old West roots, too, but population growth transformed the Old Pueblo, and the traces of its rural-west roots can be hard to find. Places like Old Tucson and Traildust Town are just remnants โ not so much of Tucson's past itself, but of our old-fashioned re-creations of the past.ย
"Hollywood is designed to entertain people," Sosa said. "They bring people to us. Once you get here, we show you the truth."
By that, of course, Sosa means the true nature of Tombstone, including its essential history as a mining town. But you have to admit that Carter, the Tombstone actor with the live rounds, also provided some true history to the visitors on Allen Street Sunday.
Lawlessness may entertain us when the guns are firing blanks and the actors are throwing themselves over theatrically. But it's a godawful mess when the rounds are live and the blood is real.
