California Joe is in books and songs from the mid 1800’s. I first heard the songs about this person in some contemporary recordings. I have found stories and songs since then from the mid 1800’s. The character I know is associated with the trails to California and the state of California. I found that there was a California Joe associated with the Civil War that was a well known sharp shooter. Is the man from the civil war the same as the one in the stories and songs on the trails to California? Do the trail tales consist of made up tales only of this same or different man? Do these tales have a basis in some truth about a man with a lot of extra fiction thrown in, or are they all fiction like Paul Bunyan?
There was a prospector/scout/Inmdian fighter named Moses Milner who went by the nickname"California Joe" He was General Custer’s chief scout during the Black Hills Expedition, and is the “California Joe” portrayed in “They Died with Their Boots On”. Is that the man you mean?
Private Truman Head was the Civil War soldier. I’m looking for the person of the tales about California Joe, Captain Renolds, Maggie (Hazel Eye), their little girl Faith, and Old Mad Jack. I think Milner was the more likely basis, but is he the one in almost all the references to California Joe?
From Digital Tradition
This was written in the year of Joe’s death by Captain Jack
Crawford (formerly Chief of Scouts, U.S. Army) and published
in his book, The Poet Scout, in 1873 (I think). It’s a true
story (or as true as Victorian poetry allowed). Link for text of California Joe
Debby McClatchy’s California Faith a sequel to California Joe and very good.
Words to the song.
California Joe the mysterious Plainsman by Colonel Prentiss Ingraham
Moses Embree Milner from American Memory.
I ran across some articles in archive for Atlantic Monthly or Harper’s New Monthly, and can’t find that link now. I’m trying to figure out if these all are mostly about the same man or not. Was one man this popular to be the basis for all this material, and how much is fiction? Why didn’t we hear about him in school, if he was so popular once?
For my turn I use raise the dead and roll a 4.
You get eaten by the goblin.
No, but seriously, Moses Milner is almost definately the California Joe referred to in the folksong. Like the character in the folksong, Milner worked for Jim Bridger, and like Jack Crawford said, “His only fault was liquor”…Milner was a drunk.
He’s also the same person referred to in the "California Joe the Mysterious Plainsman book, which states at the end:
He gets the place wrong…Milner was killed in Nebraska, not Dakota, and the date, Milner was killed on October 19, 1876, not December 5, but the character is still supposed to be him.
Because it was him, though, doesn’t mean all the stories about him are true. A lot of the western trackers and gunslingers got stories around them and became legendary, and there are all these stories around people like Bill Hickock, Jesse James, Wyatt Earp, etc, that are certainly fiction, but they were all real people.
As to why you never learned about him in school, you probably wouldn’t, unless you were taking some special course on the Indian Wars or Western folklore. He really wasn’t all that important.
Thanks for the input Captian Amazing.