Thanksgiving kicks off the holiday season, when stress can sometimes drown the cheer. If you fear your holiday gathering may run afoul, take consolation in Denver’s first Thanksgiving.
As was the case in Massachusetts, Native Americans provided the setting but were not well repaid for their hospitality. The head chief of the Southern Arapaho, Little Raven, welcomed the first Gold Rush miners to share his tribe’s winter camp at the confluence of Cherry Creek and the South Platte River. The Arapaho knew that the climate was milder at the base of the mountains. The South Platte and Cherry Creek usually flowed all winter, and the cottonwood trees provided shelter and fuel and the prairie grass dried into hay for their horse herds.
Although these resources were limited, Chief Little Raven and his tribe shared them with the pale-faces, not realizing that 100,000 of them would show up in the next few years.
Libeus Barney, proprietor of Denver’s Apollo Hall on Larimer Street, wrote about that Thanksgiving to family back home in Bennington, Vt.:
“Last Thursday was appointed by the Governor to be observed throughout the Territory as a day of Thanksgiving . . . . Many citizens of Denver and others from abroad . . . misinterpreted his Excellency’s plain English in regard to the ‘appropriate observance of the day,’ fell to the imbibing of bad liquors without stint, and the flourish of bowie knives and revolvers, to the great fright of the timid, and danger of the peaceable disposed.”
The bad liquor in question was Taos Lightning, a potent wheat whiskey enhanced by tobacco, gunpowder, chili peppers, and occasionally a few grasshoppers. Taos Lightning probably fueled the riot innocently sparked by an enterprising Hispanic farmer from southern Colorado who came into town with a wagonload of domestic turkeys. He parked his fowl on Larimer Street and went off to do some serious turkey-peddling. Meanwhile, a group of dissolutes known as the “bummers” slithered out of the Criterion Saloon and grabbed the gobblers.
The good citizens of Denver were outraged. “Bummers Misrule,” roared the Rocky Mountain News, “Citizens in Arms [For] The Turkey War.” Heated by righteous indignation, vigilantes poured into the chilly streets in search of the turkeys — feathered and otherwise. The villains laid low and quickly devoured the evidence.
Rocky Mountain News editor William N. Byers identified the turkey thieves as the “bummers” hanging out at the Criterion, including William Harvey, William “Buckskin Bill” Karl, William McCarty and William “Chuck-a-Luck” Todd. McCarty and Harvey ambushed U.S. Marshall William H. Middaugh at the Vasquez House on 11th Street (on what is now the Auraria Campus). Both fired at the marshal but missed.
Vigilante leader Thomas Pollock tracked down McCarty, who pulled out a huge bowie knife. Pollock quickly cracked McCarty’s skull with the butt of his Hawken rifle. Harvey drew a six-shooter on Pollock, but a circle of vigilantes closed in on the bummer. “The clear click, click, click of cocking pistols,” the News reported the next day, “didn’t suit him [Harvey], and he beat a hasty retreat.”
By December 30, the last bird-stealing bummer had been tossed out of town.
The vigilantes and “Judge Lynch” slowly imposed order on the town. W.H. Middaugh tracked down brazen killers such as James A. Gordon and hanged them from a cottonwood tree in the Cherry Creek bottoms. Turkeys and the Arapaho, however, remained uncomfortable, especially at Thanksgiving.
Contact Tom Noel at .
