Talk:Execution of Lucy and James Sample

Fiction?
I suspect that the execution of Lucy and James Sample is a mostly fictional story, for the reasons related in Talk:Mike Girty. The story appears to originate decades after the fact in the writings of Nehemiah Matson, an amateur historian who made little distinction between folk tales and history, and whose books are generally considered unreliable. The real-life basis of this dubious yarn is certainly Simon Girty and the execution by burning of William Crawford, a well-known story to pioneers of the era. Perhaps the Samples were a real couple who died or disappeared, and local legends filled in the details, using the notorious Simon Girty as a template.

This article does not cite any modern reliable sources to support the claim that the incident actually happened. That's a problem, of course. If we're lucky, a modern historian has shed light on this story in a publication that we haven't turned up yet. —Kevin Myers 15:20, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I saw your comments on Mike Girty. Do what needs to be done senor, I am not attached to this stuff in any way. These articles were created in a fury of Black Hawk War related material and anything we can do to clear it up would be good. If Matson made this stuff up then it should go. Deleted. With fire. Trask doesn't mention Girty or the Samples, though numerous references to both can be found, usually in passing to both, I suspect they are based on the original account from Matson and it's parlay into Armstrong and Stevens work. Though even Ruben Gold Thwaites seemed to have fallen for it. This is actually interesting and I wonder if there is some way to preserve some of this material in an article, such as Myths of the Black Hawk War. Of course, we would need someone to declare, in a scholarly publication or reliable publication, that these were, in fact, myths. I suspect you have some source in mind that declares Matson and these stories unreliable though, so that might not be a big hurdle. The Indian Wars have never been my area of expertise, so I am pretty open on this and only did the work out of personal interest. Thoughts? IvoShandor (talk) 18:03, 11 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually I am kind of embarassed because I am usually pretty damn good at sorting out these 19th century sources. I certainly don't want to be responsible for misinformation, though it is too late for that I suppose. FAIL. IvoShandor (talk) 18:07, 11 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Don't feel too bad, you're in pretty good company with Thwaites. Plus, this is pretty obscure stuff, so it's not like this article gets a lot of views.


 * Fixing the Mike Girty article is easy: we should just redirect it to Indian Creek massacre, and mention there that a 19th century source (now considered unreliable) claimed that Girty led the attack, but that modern scholars don't repeat the story. What to do with this one is less clear, because there's not an obvious article to redirect this to. Since modern scholarly histories of the Black Hawk War don't mention this event, I suspect that there's a source somewhere that describes it as an unfounded legend, but of course we can't declare it a myth until we find a source that says this. Until then, it should be made clear in this article that modern reliable sources don't mention the event. —Kevin Myers 13:02, 12 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Redirected to Minor attacks of the Black Hawk War. 03:45, 9 April 2011 (UTC)