Talk:Jesse Chisholm

He never carried a gun...
Scanning through this article I failed to find mention of what is perhaps the most significant fact about Jesse Chisholm, that is, that invariably he never carried a gun for personal protection. As with all semi-mythical figures of the old west, one wonders about this, but I recall this as an as a well known, and oft repeated, fact.

Obviously, as a frontiersman and pioneer, Jesse Chisholm was well acquainted with firearms and hunting, but apparently his unarmed condition was well known and even advertised! Somewhere, I don't remember off hand where, I recall reading a "quote" to the effect of, "If someone shots me, you'll know it was murder, 'cause I never carry a gun". He was also alleged to have encountered William Bonney, aka Billy the Kid, sometime before Billy's violent end, and offered this advice, "Kid, a gun can get you into more trouble than it can get you out of".

Perhaps, given our current mass hysteria and paranoid gun culture, these remarkable facts concerning Jesse Chisholm, an iconic figure of the Old West, should be brought out. Furthermore, I don't think Jesse's behavior was that unusual in the 'Real' West of the 19th century, where wearing a loaded and primed weapon, during the routine of daily life, was something only Green Horns from "Back East" raised on a rich diet of Dime Store Novels, would ever do. These are the same Green Horns who frequently died an agonizing death, of a self inflicted gun shot wound, somewhere out on the trail...

My apologies for not providing citations regarding this: I will try and chase down the sources. If it turns out to be unsubstantiated Folklore, it would seem to me that the 'Lore' is of interest in and of itself!

Yowoof (talk) 16:32, 9 March 2013 (UTC)


 * I think you make a valid point Yowoof, but I just thought I would respond and analyze what you are saying, since I re-wrote the Chisholm article (based on the previous article being a copyright violation) and have also thought about and read about the relevance of firearms in the mythology of "the West." I think the key point is that you use the term "semi-mythical figures" and unfortunately IMHO the post-pop-culture perceptions (myths) about the role of firearms is far different than historical reality.  Not very many people carried sidearms on a regular basis, such as depicted in film and TV "Westerns."  Police and soldiers (almost always restricted to officers) did.  I have read dozens of accounts of explorers and traders throughout the frontier regions and no one ever talks about "strapping on their holsters" or whatever.  In particular, the quick-draw gunfight is a complete fabrication.  See Gunfighter Nation for elaboration on the mythology of "the West" versus the reality.  So IMHO the way to answer the question is not to point out tha Chisholm did not regularly carry a gun, but the sweep away the myths about sidearms that is so pervasive in general.  I don't know how to do that except via straightening out things like Wikipedia one article at a time. LaurentianShield (talk) 13:59, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Copyright violation ?!?
A significant portion of the text in this article is lifted directly from Texas Sate Historical Association. I wonder how come nobody noticed? I am going to nominate it for speedy deletion, but I have absolutely no idea what this means in the context of a very old article that has had the infringing material in it for several years (evidently). So feel free to remove my tag. However, even if it is not deemed to be a copyright violation, it is bad style to lift the text from another site, especially since it ended up being jumbled and garbled. (For example, the sentence "Chisholm was active in Texas for nearly twenty years" only makes sense in the context of a Texas web site, because otherwise it seems to imply that Chisholm was a resident of Texas, and I'm pretty sure he never actually lived there, he just visited in government service to Sam Houston.) I am willing to fix the article, but (a) I need to spend some time filling in some gaps in my knowledge and (b) I want to see what the resolution of the copyright infringement is first. LaurentianShield (talk) 15:15, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Follow up: the infringing material came from from this edit in June 2006. LaurentianShield (talk) 15:29, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Suggestions for further work
I put some effort into this article based on the previous copyright violation, but I can't afford to dwell on the subject further (based on other projects). However, I left copious references for anyone who wants to improve the article further. I suggest in particular that elaborating on Chisholm's activities during the Civil War would be useful. Evidently at one point he moved from Cherokee territory to Creek territory, and it was the Creeks who took refuge near present day Wichita. Also note that somewhere during Chisholm's life and his business in the area, Kansas went from being Indian Territory to being a proto-state (the Kansas-Nebraska Act) and the manner in which this affected Chisholm's life is probably worth elaborating on. LaurentianShield (talk) 14:08, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

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Family Tree
Does anyone know why the inclusion of the family tree template makes the rest of the article appear like it's part of the template and not the article? Is there a way to fix this? Evansknight (talk) 15:58, 3 March 2023 (UTC)