Page 5 - B Fall 2012 magazine

The Wild West by Henry Brook
The Wild West by Henry Brook

Old Coyote by Nancy Wood
Old Coyote by Nancy Wood

Great Southwest Activity Book
Great Southwest Activity Book
Great Southwest Activity Book
By Sharon Schaaf

The Elements Gift Shop in the Red Rock Canyon Visitor Center is an excellent place to shop for unique and special
gifts for your children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews. As the holidays approach, I’d like to give you my slant on
three books I recently bought as gifts for my grandchildren.

A good choice for middle school students is The Wild West by Henry Brock. It is part of the Usborne True Stories
Series of nonfiction books written for children and teens. In each chapter, Brock sets the record straight about a fa-
mous figure of the old west, written without the exaggeration that was typical of authors during those times.

By far the most amazing story is that of Hugh Glass, who worked as a scout for
a South Dakota fur company. In 1823, he was mauled by a bear and it took him
two months to crawl out of the wilderness after members of his crew abandoned
him. It was a party of friendly Sioux warriors who found Hugh and nursed him
back to health.

Wild Bill Hickok met Buffalo Bill Cody when Wild Bill was escorting a wagon
train and rescued a young Buffalo Bill from a bunch of bullies. Hickok worked
as a scout and spy for the Union during the Civil War, a sheriff in Kansas and
Texas, an entertainer with Buffalo Bill’s show, a gold hunter and a gambler.

The story of our country’s Manifest Destiny is told profiling the reckless and
impatient George Armstrong Custer and Geronimo, the last of the Native
American chiefs to surrender to the U.S. Army. Geronimo was born in 1829 in
New Mexico; when he died in 1909, it was on a reservation in Oklahoma, not
on his lands in Arizona as he was promised.

Billy the Kid and Butch Cassidy were two outlaws who changed their names
several times during their lifetimes. Billy the Kid was born Henry McCarty in
New York City, but after his mother moved to New Mexico and remarried, he became Henry Antrim. When he joined
a gang of New Mexico rustlers and gunslingers, he changed his name to William Bonney and was dubbed Bill the
Kid. Butch Cassidy was born Robert Parker in 1866 in southern Utah, changed his name to George Cassidy after he
became an outlaw, and was nicknamed Butch when he worked as a butcher.

Wyatt Earp and Emmett Dalton both survived gunfights. Dalton was the only survivor when his gang tried to make
history by robbing two banks at once in Coffeyville, Kansas in l892. Wyatt was the only one of the Earp brothers to
escape unwounded from the Gunfight at O.K. Corral. Both men tried to sell their stories to Hollywood in their retire-
ment years. While visiting a movie set, Wyatt met a young stagehand named Marion Morrison. That young man be-

came John Wayne. (continued on page 6)
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