Return of "Yellowstone Kelly"

I was eight when I saw the movie Yellowstone Kelly, with Clint Walker as the almost-forgotten frontiersman, explorer and army scout in the post-Civil War West. I don’t remember much of the plot, but Walker – who was star of the Cheyenne TV series – battled the wilderness, Indians, and an inept assistant played by Ed "Kookie" Byrnes. The big dude played Cheyenne Brodie on television, roaming the West and helping folks out of various predicaments. He was heroic, in all the ways of westerns of the fifties and early sixties.

The University of New Mexico Press has just published The Life of Yellowstone Kelly by Jerry Keenan of Longmont, Colo. The true tale is even more fantastic than the Hollywood version. Kelly was born in New York in 1848 and joined the U.S. Army at the close of the Civil War. He served in Minnesota and the Dakotas. When he left the army, he headed further West and "came to know the Upper Missouri and Yellowstone River valleys as well as any white man of his era," according to the UNM Press web site. Later, "he explored Alaska, fought in the Philippines, and served as agent at the San Carlos Apache reservation in Arizona. He then prospected in Nevada before finally retiring to the quiet life of a California orchardist."

"Jerry Keenan used Kelly's memoirs and personal correspondence, along with a variety of primary and secondary sources, to produce a comprehensive look at this remarkable man who knew many prominent figures of his era, including George Bird Grinnell, Col. Nelson A. Miles, William F. ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody, and President Theodore Roosevelt."

Keenan is a writer/historian and the author of The Great Sioux Uprising, The Wagon Box Fight, Encyclopedia of American Indian Wars 1492-1890, and Encyclopedia of the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars.

He’ll be signing copies of his book on Saturday, Jan. 6, 2 p.m., at the Borders Bookstore, 1101 S. Hover St., Longmont, Colo.

Labels: Western History, writers, Wyoming history

- posted by Michael Shay @ 9:01 AM