Notorious Gamblers of the Old West

Introduction

The Texas cattle herder is a character with but few wants and meager ambition. His diet is principally plug and whisky and the occupation dearest to his heart are gambling.         

Topeka Commonwealth, 1871

Gambling played a major role in the lives of the men that drove the western movement of Americans across the continent during the nineteenth century. Games of chance were dear to the hearts of not only cowboys, but also gold miners, plantation owners, bankers, merchants, soldiers, trappers, buffalo hunters, mule skinners, and most of the other men of the American West, even including some preachers.

Wherever there were men with money there was gambling – and most of it was crooked. Whether it was rigged, fixed, double-dealt, cold-decked, braced or otherwise manipulated - very little was left to luck and skill.

Though there were some gamblers who were known as on-the-square or legitimate, if that word can be used when referring to the players of the day, most used some form of advantage to win much more often than they lost. Some were not gamblers at all, but mere con men skinning suckers as fast as they could find them.

WITH THIS IN MIND, who were the major players and where did they ply their trade? How did they employ tricks to cheat the other players without being detected? Why did most of the games of the western frontier pass into oblivion and why are these same games not played in gambling casinos today?

Though most of us think we have a fairly good running knowledge of Old West gambling, largely provided by the westerns on television and movies, this book takes a closer look at this integral facet of our history that provokes both condemnation and revelry.

Leaving the moral issues of gambling to be defined and discussed by philosophers and theologians, this work explores the myth and lore that drove men to risk fortunes, big or small, on the turn of a card or the spin of a wheel.

Whether it was a game of poker played on a blanket or a faro bet placed in an elegant saloon, it is a safe bet to say that gambling fulfilled one of the basic needs of the early frontiersman – liquor, lust, and luck.

Most settlements started with a small clump of buildings (quite often little more than tents) that usually included a general mercantile store, a livery stable or wagon yard, and a saloon.

Then, as the settlement grew, a few more businesses sprung up and more often than not additional saloons crowded in to provide the major form of entertainment available to the men of that era – games of chance.

Unlike today with the plethora of entertainment choices provided by television, movies, computers and other technological devices, the frontiersman had very few choices as a diversion from his everyday toils.

Most often, he was reduced to reading a book, chatting with friends, or playing a game. Books were often hard to come by and any game worth playing was worth wagering.

As western saloons evolved, a typical layout usually followed along these lines: an entrance foyer, the bar area with maybe a few card tables and billiards tables in the back.

Traditionally, saloons were housed in a building that was longer than it was wide, with an overhanging awning covering the front entrance. Contrary to most of our movie images of saloons, they quite often did not have bat-wing doors; instead, one or more standard wooden doors with glass panels provided access from the street.

Once inside the door, customers usually saw a long bar running down the right wall. The bar was usually a massive work of oak with a brass rail that provided a foot prop while standing for a drink.

Here and there, a few spittoons enabled tobacco chewers to deposit their show before downing a shot of red-eye.

To the left were a few card tables and chairs strictly meant for gambling – all drinking was done standing up. When you could not manage the upright position any longer, you were told that you had had enough and go sleep it off.

Over time, a class distinction developed among saloons in which there were low dives and first class saloons Gamblers were interested in the upscale saloons while conmen and sharps operated in the skin houses where drunks were sometimes allowed to sleep on the floor after having their pockets cleaned out.

Usually the mark of a better saloon was the addition of gambling rooms to the rear or a gambling hall located in a second story above the saloon. This accommodated the serious gamblers where large amounts of cash exchanged hands over the green cloth tables.

Saloon owners quickly found that they needed to offer more ways for customers to fill their coffers than simply selling liquor. Cigars and other tobacco products were introduced and some even provided variety theaters and painted women to boost their revenues, but the real cash cow was gambling.

AS IT EVOLVED, SALOON owners offered someone, usually a noted gambler, the gambling concession - with the saloon getting a percentage of the take. The better the location, the more well-heeled the customers, and the professional expertise of an efficient gambling operation could mean sizeable profits for the owner.

Besides location, reputation was everything in the saloon business. From the Mississippi River to the Barbary Coast of California one saloon tried to top the others with what they offered and who gambled there.

Big name gamblers drew a crowd and this translated into bigger profits from liquor sales and gambling. Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Doc Holliday, Luke Short, Ben Thompson, Swiftwater Bill Gates, Dick Clark, Rowdy Joe Lowe, and the rest of the old west's gambling superstars ran the gaming operations in most of the better saloons of the era.

Customers flocked to these saloons to try their luck against the legends or simply watch the action. The fact that some of the big names in western gamblers were deadly gunfighters meant that the potential for violence was greater with these players—but sometimes the risk was worth the profits to be made with them running the tables.

Most of these men got their start and reputations working the circuit of the Mississippi River boats, the railhead cattle towns of Kansas, or the boomtowns that popped up around gold or silver mining. The gunfighter Ben Thompson got his start by running the Bull's Head Saloon with partner Phil Coe in Ellsworth, Kansas. Ben's friend, Bat Masterson, also started his career in the cattle towns of Texas and Kansas.

Wyatt Earp already had a reputation of a seasoned gambler when he took over the gambling operation at the Oriental Saloon in Tombstone, Arizona. Luke Short was such a draw that the White Elephant Saloon in Fort Worth added on an apartment for Little Luke and his consort to live in while he was running the tables for the saloon.

In general, these legendary gamblers were known as legitimate or that they played a fair game without cheating. Truth be told, all of them knew the methods employed by the sharps to clean the pockets of the other players at the table. They had to know these tricks in order to spot a cheater at their table. Did they ever use any of these advantages to increase their odds? Probably so, but the public's perception of these men was that they ran a square game.

Of course, the mere fact that the gamblers with a reputation of killing other men, in self-defense, reduced the chances of someone accusing them of cheating in a game.

In contrast, there was a sizable coterie of gambling specialists that relied on chicanery and the technology of the day to trim the suckers at the tables.

Some were known sharps while others posed as honest players until they were discovered cheating, which required them to make a hasty departure to the next boomtown where they were not known. In addition, there were roving bands of con men that gave the appearance of being simple gamblers, but in truth never gave a sucker an even break.

Foremost among these rogues was a Mississippi River boat gambler named George Devol, who could play a legitimate game with unparalleled skill, but yet made most of his fortune running three-card monte schemes. Jefferson Randolph Smith (Soapy Smith) got his start running a con game in which he sold bars of soap that were reported to possibly contain five, ten, or fifty dollar bills wrapped inside the soap wrapper.

The only winners in these charades were his shills, leaving the suckers with a simple bar of soap for the purchase price of five dollars each. Canada Bill Jones, who was a master of disguises, raked in several fortunes during his lifetime running three-card monte schemes on riverboats and trains – only to lose them at the faro tables.

One of the most often sited gambling quotations was attributed to Canada Bill when he was told that the faro game he was playing in a small backwater town was rigged. He is reported to have nodded his head in agreement and then with a heavy sigh said, I know, but it is the only game in town.

Canada Bill's addiction to faro was not uncommon and throughout the west, faro was by far the most popular card game offered in the gambling halls. Monte (also called Spanish Monte), poker, blackjack, were also popular with the players in the Old West. In addition, there were games with the colorful names of red and black, acey-deucy, seven up, red-dog, and brag. For the dice shooters there were high-low, chuck-a-luck, craps, hazard and grand hazard. Roulette and keno were also very popular with the frontiersmen, though these games were easily manipulated to retain a large portion of the money wagered by the players.

Other forms of wagering such as lotteries, horse racing, prize fighting, cockfighting, and other non-casino gambling ventures were prevalent during this time period but have been intentionally left out of this work. This keeps the focus of the story on what was most often seen in saloons throughout the inglorious days of our wild frontier.

From the mid-eighteen hundreds to just past the turn of the twentieth century saloons and gambling flourished until the morality pendulum swung from the wide-open days to the establishment of anti-gambling laws. First, it was laws against faro and keno, and then later the other saloon games were deemed illegal until gambling faded from the saloons. Eventually the pendulum swung even more and the saloons themselves were outlawed in most states. Later Prohibition served as the final death knell for what was left of the wild and wooly days of the western frontier.

An article that appeared in the Austin Daily Statesman on July 5, 1909 provides a unique reflection on the passing of the great gambling era when two of the most famous saloons were torn down for the construction of a seven-story commercial building in Austin, Texas:

San Antonio or El Paso were never more famous for their gambling resorts in the early days than was Austin. Most of the gambling houses here were in the rooms over the Iron Front and Crystal saloons and upstairs in that block. Any day in the week scores of horses could be seen hitched out in front and upstairs there was the clank of money, the voice of the keno man, the general babble of gambling house talk, and all that goes to make up the ideal gambling house scene.

The ranchmen would come in often and play at chance and the cowboys who worked for three months would come in and blow in their earnings but have the times of their lives while it lasted. Then there were such men as Ben Thompson and his associates who kept the merry side going and a scrap was always on tap. Many a row started in the gambling houses and ended in from one to three deaths on the streets. Thompson used to shoot up the houses just for pastime, to have a little fun...

It is safe to estimate that an average of $30,000 per month passed over the tables in the gambling houses over the Crystal and Iron Front saloons in the early days. A well-known Austin resident said yesterday that he can remember of seeing more than a hundred gamblers of the sport class on the street in front of the two buildings at one time besides the scores of cowmen who came in to pike.

Most of the remains of the old saloons and gambling halls are gone now as well as the men who played a major role in the history of the Trans-Mississippi West. The faro tables, keno cages, and roulette wheels have been relegated to museums.

Strangely enough, as the morality pendulum swung back in the other direction, gambling is now legal in a number of states and to some extent, the saloons have returned.

But, now the major gambling operations appear as casinos (no longer called gambling halls) and millions of Americans are separated from their cash in more elaborate ways, all warranted as being free of cheating by state regulators.

The games of faro and monte are no longer played, but updated versions of poker, keno and roulette still offers the possibility of winning large sums of money if lady luck smiles on you.

This work does not analyze the socioeconomic implications of gambling, nor does it seek to explain the motivations or morals of the American gambler.

Without passing judgment on the propriety of the societal issues of gambling, this work aspires to tell the authentic story of gambling in the frontier days of America. The work provides character sketches of some of the most famous (or infamous) gamblers, the hellcats known as the petticoat dealers and finally, the prolific con men (three-card monte artists, hucksters, thimble riggers, and other scammers) of the last decades of the 1880s.

So, pull up a chair and take a look at some of the notorious gamblers that roamed the Old West

The Gamblers

Up then stepped a gambling man from Louisville, who tried to get a bet against the Whipperwill. Billy flashed a roll that surely was a bear, the boiler, it exploded, blew them up in the air. The gambler said to Billy as they left the wreck, 'I don't know where we're going, but we're neck in neck.' Says Bill the gambler, 'I'll tell you what I'll do, I will bet another thousand I'll go higher than you.

From the song, Steamboat Bill

It's true that a large percentage of the people that populated the American West frequently gambled, but only a small amount of them were actually professional gamblers.

Heralded by some, despised by many the professional gamblers were often solitary individuals driven by a passion to win - sometimes at all costs.

Some came from a background of the well-heeled upper class while most came from meager origins desperate to improve their lot in life.

Along the way, they were praised as being knights of the green cloth or ridiculed with such pejorative terms as tinhorns or blacklegs. All were subjected to the whims of cultural changes that evolved as the frontier calmed from the early days of wild and reckless behavior.

One day they were allowed to be a part of the community and sometimes literally the next day they were headed out of town on a rail. It was a precarious profession fraught with risks, both financially and life-threatening experiences.

As a result, professional gamblers were most of all gypsies - continually on the move, staying ahead of the law or moving to locations that are more lucrative.

Most of the early frontier gamblers got their start in New Orleans or the river towns that lined the Mississippi. A man named John Davis, in New Orleans, opened the first American gambling casino in 1822.

He offered large tables laden with fine foods and liquor along with his roulette wheels, faro tables and other games of chance. After adding a coterie of prostitutes, he kept his operation running full blast twenty-four hours a day.

Other establishments quickly opened and New Orleans soon became an internationally known port famous for its gambling industry. A new term for professional gamblers evolved during this time: card sharper or sharp.

In a short time, an area along the waterfront became known as The Swamp where professional gamblers, cheats, and con men skinned suckers with great proclivity. In addition, thieves, pickpockets, and thugs made the area so dangerous that the police stayed away. This type of lawless sin dens quickly replicated all up and down the Mississippi. There was Pinch Gut in Memphis, the Landing in Vicksburg, and Natchez-under-the Hill below Natchez. They preyed on flatboat men, keelers, and any other river travelers. Because of their overwhelming presence on the waterfront areas, the respectable citizens could not exert effective control and as a result, law enforcement left the miscreants alone - as long as they stayed away from legitimate businesses and residential sections.

By 1834, the situation had grown so obnoxious to the decent people of the river towns that a fulminating backlash developed against the gambling element, a term given to all of the vices conducted in the waterfront hellholes. Fanning the flames of their anger was the July arrest of John Murrell, a tall, well-dressed gambler thought to have instigated The Clan of the Mystic Confederacy.

An informant testified that Murrell along with a large gang of criminals of every stripe were bent upon surreptitiously organizing a revolt among the slaves - culminating in a full insurrection on Christmas Day, 1835. Murrell and his henchmen planned to take advantage of the civilians and troops subduing the slave uprising by looting all of the major river towns.

The informant, Virgil Stewart, was in the court when Murrell was sentenced to ten years of hard labor. After the trial, Stewart saw an opportunity to make a small profit by writing and selling a pamphlet describing the whole story. The Western Land Pirate sold thousands of copies all up and down the river and the fires of retribution burst into full conflagration.

Over the course of the ensuing months men identified as members of the Mystic Confederacy were rounded up, thrashed with whips, tarred and feathered, and in some cases lynched.

After Christmas Day in 1834 passed without incident tempers began to cool and the violence against the gamblers and other hard cases slowed to only isolated incidents. Then in June of 1835, the wife of a plantation owner heard two of their slaves arguing about the forthcoming uprising. Their plantation was near Beattie's Bluff in Madison County, Mississippi, and within hours, riders were alerting plantations all up and down the valley that the clan was not out of business.

After brutally whipping the two slaves, they got them to confess that the revolt had been changed to the Fourth of July. The plot was for the slaves to rise up and kill all of their owners, arm themselves and march into the towns to rape and pillage. A group of vigilantes rounded up a few more slaves, forced them to confess, and then hanged the whole group.

In quick time, the Committee of Safety came into being and it declared that they would hunt down any person or persons, either white or black, and try in summary manner any person brought before them, with the power to handle or ship. They caught up with a gambler and horse thief named Joshua Cotton who had been masquerading as a proper physician. The vigilantes beat a confession out of Cotton in which he admitted to being in the clan's grand council.