1. U.S. Department of the Interior, Annual Report of the Acting Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park, 1892, by George S. Anderson (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1892), 3, 5, 9; U.S. Department of the Interior, Annual Report of the Acting Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park, 1895, 12. Anderson's comments were echoed by Garden and Forest magazine, which observed in 1892 that “poachers have settled all around it [Yellowstone] so that the game has no adequate protection.” “Our National Parks and Forest Reservation,” Garden and Forest 5 (December 28, 1892): 613–14.

2. U.S. Department of the Interior, Annual Report of the Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park, 1886, 7.

3. William Hornaday, Wildlife Conservation in Theory and Practice: Lectures Delivered before the Forest School of Yale University (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1914), 189–90. See also Hornaday, The Extermination of the American Bison, with a Sketch of Its Discovery and Life History (Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Museum, 1889), 520.

4. Hornaday, Our Vanishing Wildlife, 335.

5. Letter to the editor, Recreation 3 (September 1895): 141. See also “West's Vanishing Big Game,” Recreation 25 (October 1906): 368–69. For an account of local residents using wild game, see Mildred Albert Martin, The Martins of Gunbarrel (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton, 1959), 16, 86.

6. Eric Van Young issued a provocative call for historians to move beyond structural models of causation, in “To See Someone Not Seeing: Historical Studies of Peasants and Politics in Mexico,” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 6 (1990): 133–59.

7. Haines, Yellowstone Story, 2:62; Chicago Tribune, December 23, 1894.

8. Chittenden, Yellowstone National Park, 143–44; “The Capture of Howell,” Forest and Stream 42 (March 31, 1894): 270; U.S. Department of the Interior, Annual Report of the Acting Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park, 1894, by George S. Anderson (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1894), 9–10; Livingston (Mont.) Enterprise, March 31, 1894.

9. “The Yellowstone National Park Protection Act,” in Hunting in Many Lands: The Book of the Boone and Crockett Club, ed. Theodore Roosevelt and George Bird Grinnell (New York: Forest and Stream, 1895), 414; Livingston (Mont.) Post, April 12, 1894.

10. Grinnell's efforts were not limited to the pages of Forest and Stream. See, for instance, “The Yellowstone National Park,” Garden and Forest 7 (April 4, 1894): 131.

11. “A Premium on Crime,” Forest and Stream 42 (March 24, 1894): 243. In a similar vein Garden and Forest remarked, “The fact that Yellowstone Park and the adjacent reservation has been set aside for the use and enjoyment of the people forever is really no protection to its forests or its game, but rather an advertisement to every outlaw that he can steal the timber, or set the woods on fire, or slaughter the big game, without fear of punishment.” “The Yellowstone National Park,” Garden and Forest 7 (April 4, 1894): 131.

12. Livingston (Mont.) Post, March 22, 1894.

13. Anderson to Secretary of the Interior, May 14, 1897, “Letters Sent, July 24, 1896-October 1, 1897,” Bound Volume VI, Item 218, YNPA; Anderson to Secretary of the Interior, April 8 and June 27, 1891, “Letters Sent, August 18, 1889-June 25, 1892,” Bound Volume III, Item 215, YNPA. Emphasis in the original. The 1900 census records fortynine people living in Cooke City. 1900 Population Census, Manuscript Schedules, Park County, Montana, Roll 913, T623, Records of the Bureau of the Census, RG 29, National Archives.

14. Anderson to Secretary of the Interior, January 20, 1893, and January 7, 1894, “Letters Sent, June 25, 1892–March 17, 1894,” Bound Volume IV, Item 216, YNPA; Anderson to Blaine, December 26, 1896, “Letters Sent, July 24,

15. Chicago Tribune, December 23, 1894; U.S. Department of the Interior, Annual Report of the Acting Superintendent of Yellowstone Park, 1894, 9–10. A discussion of the role played by both the Boone and Crockett Club and Forest and Stream in passing the Park Protection Act can be found in George Bird Grinnell, Brief History of the Boone and Crockett Club (New York: Forest and Stream Publishing, 1910), 18–20.

16. Livingston (Mont.) Post, March 29, 1894.

17. Livingston (Mont.) Enterprise, March 31, 1894.

18. Anonymous, n.d., Document No. 696, “A-E, January 1, 1882-December 31, 1894,” Item 4, YNPA; Anonymous, n.d., Document No. 2553, “F-K, January 1, 1895-December 31, 1899,” Item 11, YNPA.

19. Doyle to Pitcher, July 7, 1901, Document No. 3759, “Letters Received, A-E, January 1, 1900-December 31, 1902,” Item 15, YNPA; Livingston (Mont.) Enterprise, January 1, 1898.

20. Livingston (Mont.) Post, April 12 and August 2, 1894.

21. “Park Poachers and Their Ways,” Forest and Stream 42 (May 26, 1894): 444.

22. Sheffield to Anderson, November 19, 1895, Document No. 1621, “S-Z, January 1, 1894-December 31, 1895,” Item 7, YNPA; Anonymous [“Quill”] to Wear, August 14, 1885, Document 679, “A-E, January 1, 1882-December 31, 1894,” Item No. 4, YNPA. United States v. William Binkley, Charles Purdy, and Oscar Adams (United States District Court, Ninth Circuit, Southern District of California, 1906, Yellowstone National Park Archives), 228. A transcript of this trial is located in “U.S. Commissioner Meldrum—Trial Records,” Item 82, YNPA. For more on the linkage between saloons and manliness, see Michael Kaplan, “New York City Tavern Violence and the Creation of a Working-Class Male Identity,” Journal of the Early Republic 15 (winter 1995): 591–617; and Gorn, Manly Art, 133–34.

23. In his study of poaching in England, for example, Roger B. Manning argues that poaching often served as a “symbolic substitute for war”: “For those young men whose families did not possess hunting privileges, the act of hunting outside the law, at night, with weapons, and in the face of gamekeepers, must have further satisfied their compulsive need to prove their masculinity and martial valor.” Manning, Hunters and Poachers: A Social and Cultural History of Unlawful Hunting in England, 1485–1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 8, 35–56. A more general survey of risk and daring as masculine attributes can be found in David Gilmore, Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 56–77. Gunther Peck offers a provocative discussion of risk-taking in the American West in “Manly Gambles: The Politics of Risk on the Comstock Lode, 1860–1880,” Journal of Social History 26 (summer 1993): 701–23.

24. “The Account of Howell's Capture,” Forest and Stream, 377–78.

25. Hofer to Hill, February 5, 1927, Manuscript 91-188, YNPA.

26. Howell to Young, September 24, 1897, Document No. 1504, “Employees, etc., January 1, 1882-December 31, 1897,” Item 9, YNPA. On Howell's reward, see Haines, Yellowstone Story, 2:205–7. Oddly enough, the money had to be sent to the Philippines, where Howell was working in a restaurant.

27. For these very reasons, conservationists in Africa often hire former poachers as informers or park rangers. N. Gordon, Ivory Knights, 137–38.

28. U.S. Department of the Interior, Annual Report of the Acting Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park, 1895, 12. The 1900 census records ninetyeight people, comprising thirtyfour families, dwelling in Henry's Lake. 1900 Population Census, Manuscript Schedules, Henry's Lake, Fremont County, Idaho, Roll 232, T623, Records of the Bureau of the Census, RG 29, National Archives.

29. Elmer Lindsley, “A Winter Trip through Yellowstone Park,” Harper's Weekly 42 (January 19, 1898): 106.

30. Emerson Hough, “Yellowstone Park Poachers,” Forest and Stream 51 (July 16, 1898): 45; U.S. Department of the Interior, Annual Report of the Acting Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park, 1896, by George S. Anderson (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1896), 11.

31. John E. Archer, By a Flash and a Scare: Incendiarism, Animal Maiming, and Poaching in East Anglia, 1815–1870 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 235–37. See also the studies of “poaching fraternities” in Roger Manning, “Unlawful Hunting in England, 1500–1640,” Forest and Conservation History 38 (January 1994): 20; and in Michael Carter, Peasants and Poachers in Norfolk: A Study in Rural Disorder in Norfolk (Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1980), 48–59. Discussions of poaching organizations in the African context can be found in Peter T. Dalleo, “The Somali Role in Organized Poaching in Northeastern Kenya, 1909–1939,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 12 (1979): 472–82; and Michael L. Stone, “Organized Poaching in Kitui District: A Failure in District Authority,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 5 (1972): 436–52.

32. U.S. Department of the Interior, Annual Report of the Acting Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park, 1896, 11; Roland Whitman, interview by author, March 5, 1996; 1900 Population Census, Manuscript Schedules, Fremont County, Idaho, Roll 232, T623, Records of the Bureau of the Census, RG 29, National Archives.

33. John Whitman, interview by author, October 26, 1994; Trude to Goode, September 12, 1900, Document No. 4620, “Letters Received, S-Z, January 1, 1900-December 31, 1902,” Item 19, YNPA; “Killing Park Buffalo,” Forest and Stream 45 (December 7, 1895): 494; Anderson to Secretary of the Interior, December 16, 1895, “Letters Sent, March 17, 1894–July 23, 1896,” Bound Volume V, Item 217, YNPA. See also U.S. Department of the Interior, Annual Report of the Acting Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park, 1896, 11.

34. Leigh to Lindsley, December 1 and December 11, 1897, “Leigh, Richard (aka ‘Beaver Dick’),” Manuscript 91-120, YNPA; McDermott to Anderson, n.d., Document No. 1142, “F–K, January 1, 1881-December 31, 1894,” Item 5, YNPA; Manuscript 91-198, YNPA; U.S. Department of the Interior, Annual

35. “Veritas” to Anderson, September 18, 1895, Document No. 1699, “S–Z, January 1, 1894-December 31, 1895,” Item 7, YNPA.

36. Anonymous, January 24, 1909, “Poaching, Reports of and Inquiries,” in “Protection, 1908–1914,” Item 105, YNPA. All misspellings reflect the original letter.

37. Anonymous to Anderson, n.d., Document No. 2069, Anonymous to Anderson, n.d., Document 2070, “A–E, January 1, 1895–December 31, 1899,” Item 10, YNPA. All misspellings reflect the original letter.

38. In addition to the two letters in the paragraph above, examples of using “citizen” as a pen name include Anonymous to Pitcher, November 17, 1906, Document No. 5818, “A–E, January 1, 1903–December 31, 1906,” Item 24, YNPA; Pratt to Erwin, January 4, 1898, Document No. 2852, “L–R, January 1, 1896–December 31, 1899,” Item 12, YNPA; Anonymous to Anderson, September 20, 1895, Document No. 2068, “A–E, January 1, 1895–December 31, 1899,” Item 10, YNPA.

39. Hague to Pitcher, n.d., Document No. 4042, “F-K, January 1, 1900–December 31, 1903,” Item 17, YNPA; Cummins to Anderson, May 18, 1892, Document No. 779, “A–E, January 1, 1882–December 31, 1894,” Item 4, YNPA; Lindsley to Young, January 11, 1898, Document No. 1458, “Employees, etc., January 1, 1882–December 31, 1897,” Item 9, YNPA; Marshall to Anderson, August 27, 1895. Document No. 1157, “L–R, January 1, 1882–December 31, 1895,” Item 6, YNPA. All misspellings reflect the original letters.

40. Leigh to Lindsley, February 20, 1898, Manuscript 91-210, YNPA. All misspellings reflect the original letter.

41. Report of Elmer Lindsley, January 16, 1898, Document No. 4881, “Employees, January 1, 1898–December 31, 1903,” Item 20, YNPA; Dean H. Green, History of Island Park (Ashton, Idaho: Island Park–Gateway Publishing, 1990), 115.

42. “The Courtenay Buffalo Case,” Forest and Stream 46 (February 1, 1896): 95; “Snap Shots,” Forest and Stream 48 (May 8, 1897): 361; “Protect Idaho Buffalo,” Forest and Stream 45 (July 13, 1895): 23; Transcript of Trial of James Courtenay, December 26, 1895, “Undesirables in Park,” Item 78, YNPA.

43. “Record of Violations of Rules and Regulations,” Item 145, YNPA, 3–9; Nolie Mumey, Rocky Mountain Dick: Stories of His Adventures in Capturing Wild Animals (Denver: Range Press, 1953), 65–66, 73; “Yellowstone Park Poachers,” Forest and Stream 51 (December 31, 1898): 527.

44. “Elk Slaughter in Wyoming,” Forest and Stream 52 (March 4, 1899): 167; “Slaughtering Elk for Their Teeth,” Forest and Stream 58 (January 11, 1902): 30.

45. Josephine Paterek, Encyclopedia of American Indian Costume (New York: W. W. Norton, 1994), 95, 101, 108–9, 137, 193; “Extinction of the Elks,” Forest and Stream 59 (September 13, 1902): 205; James Fullerton, Autobiography of Roosevelt's Adversary (Boston: Roxburgh Publishing, 1912), 123–24; Calkins, Jackson Hole, 133; Elizabeth Wied Hayden, “Driving Out the Tusk Hunters,” Teton Magazine (winter-spring 1971): 22.

46. Robert B. Betts, Along the Ramparts of the Tetons: The Saga of Jackson Hole, Wyoming (Boulder, Colo.: Colorado Associated University Press, 1978), 181. Occasionally, if the animal were frozen solid, one might have to cut off the jaw and boil it to free the canine teeth. See Report of Lt. Ware, November 24, 1903, Document No. 4944, “Employees, January 1, 1898–December 31, 1903,” Item 20, YNPA.

47. U.S. Department of the Interior, Annual Report of the Superintendent of National Parks, 1916 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1916), 37; Palmer to Pitcher, April 9, 1907, “U.S. Commissioner Meldrum—Trial Records, Miscellaneous Correspondence,” Item 83, YNPA; U.S. v. Binkley, 30–31. See also “The Wyoming Game Situation,” Forest and Stream 52 (June 17, 1899): 466; and the Tusk Hunters file and Binkley file of the Jackson Hole Historical Society.

48. Elinore Pruitt Stewart, Letters on an Elk Hunt: By a Woman Homesteader (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1915), 127–28; Preble, Report on the Condition of Elk, 21. A general recollection of tusking in Jackson Hole can be found in Sam Hicks, “Ivory Dollars,” High Country 3 (winter 1967): 40–45. A fictional portrait of tusking at this time can be found in Joe Back, The Sucker's Teeth (Denver: Sage Books, 1965).

49. U.S. v. Binkley, 69; 1900 Population Census, Manuscript Schedules, Records of the Bureau of the Census, RG 29, Election District 13, Uinta County, Wyoming, Roll 1827, T623, National Archives.

50. David Saylor, Jackson Hole, Wyoming (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970), 142; U.S. v. Binkley, 292; Stewart, Letters on an Elk Hunt, 127.

51. U.S. v. Binkley, 99, 291. Other poachers attached elk hooves to the soles of their boots to achieve a similar effect. Calkins, Jackson Hole, 135.

52. U.S. v. Binkley, 230.

53. Palmer to Pitcher, April 9, 1907, “U.S. Commissioner Meldrum—Trial Records, Miscellaneous Correspondence,” Item 83, YNPA.

54. Richard White has suggested that, through such labor, rural folk acquired “a bodily knowledge of the natural world” that has often been overlooked by modern-day environmentalists. See White, “‘Are You an Environmentalist or Do You Work for a Living?’: Work and Nature,” in Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, ed. William Cronon (New York: W. W. Norton, 1995), 172; and White, The Organic Machine (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995).

55. For an extended discussion of American views on wage work and dependency at this time, see Daniel T. Rodgers, The Work Ethic in Industrial America, 1850–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 30–40.

56. Sheffield to Brett, November 1, 1912, “Poaching, Reports of and Inquiries, 1909–1913,” in “Protection, 1908–1914,” Item 105, YNPA. See also the letter to the editor in Recreation 6 (May 1897): 368, complaining about “coal diggers” from Aldridge, Montana, poaching Yellowstone's elk. Census information from 1900 indicates that many of the inhabitants of Horr, Aldridge, and Jardine, Montana, were coal or quartz miners. 1900 Population Census, Manuscript Schedules, Park County, Montana, Roll 913, T623, Records of the Bureau of the Census, RG 29, National Archives.

57. D. Jones, Crime, Protest, Community, 69. Similarly, West Virginia coal miners often found gardens, livestock, and hunting to be “a highly important economic safety valve in an industry plagued with irregular employment and periodic depressions.” David Alan Corbin, Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields: The Southern West Virginia Miners, 1880–1922 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981), 33–35.

58. “Record of Violations of Rules and Regulations, 1887–1921,” Item 145, YNPA; see also U.S. Department of the Interior, Annual Report of the Acting Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park, 1908, 12. Although it could be that this increase in arrests came as a result of heightened vigilance by the army, there were no changes in the park's administration until mid-May 1908, when Major H. C. Benson was appointed new acting superintendent and the number of troops at Yellowstone was increased to three hundred.

59. Sacket to Lindsay, January 23, 1914, “Poaching, Reports of and Inquiries, 1909–1913,” in “Protection, 1908–1914,” Item 105, YNPA; U.S. Department of the Interior, Annual Report of the Acting Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park, 1912, by Lloyd M. Brett (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1912), 11.

60. Letter to the editor, Recreation 6 (May 1897): 368; Livingston (Mont.) Enterprise, January 22, 1898.

61. William Simpson, “The Game Question in Jackson Hole,” Forest and Stream 51 (December 10, 1898): 468. Similar discussions of poaching as a questionable alternative to wage labor can be found in Preble, Report on the Condition of Elk, 21; Judd, Common Lands, Common People, 160, 183–88; and the description of the poacher E. E. Van Dyke in Arnold to Anderson, September 15, 1893, Document No. 670, “A-E, January 1, 1882-December 31, 1894,” Item 4, YNPA.

62. W. L. Simpson, “The Jackson Hole's Situation,” Forest and Stream 51 (December 17, 1898): 485; Romey to Pitcher, May 16, 1902, Document No. 4931, “Employees, January 1, 1898-December 31, 1903,” Item 20, YNPA.

63. Quoted in R. B. Betts, Along the Ramparts of the Tetons, 184. See also Hayden, “Driving Out the Tusk Hunters,” 36. Binkley and his wife took the added precaution of hiding their stash of elk teeth by sewing them into their children's garments, as they “didn't think that the wardens would search the children while they would search those people that came out, grown people.” U.S.v. Binkley, 289.

64. U.S. v. Binkley, 220. For accounts of other Jackson Holers poaching, see R. B. Betts, Along the Ramparts of the Tetons, 181. For the story of Binkley's arrest and fine, see Hayden, “Driving Out the Tusk Hunters,” 23.

65. Newspaper accounts record Binkley as having anywhere from 227 to 275 elk tusks in his possession. Pocatello (Idaho) Tribune, April 26 and April 30, 1907. A similar desire to protect important local resources evinced itself in other communities' attacks on poachers drawn from their own ranks. See, for instance, the account of driving out a rapacious moose poacher in New Hampshire, discussed in Judd, Common Lands, Common People, 49.

66. Sign quoted in R. B. Betts, Along the Ramparts of the Tetons, 176.

67. “Poaching in the Yellowstone Park,” 255; U.S. Department of the Interior, Annual Report of the Acting Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park, 1907, 24; and “The Elk Cases,” Forest and Stream 67 (December 22, 1906): 975. Although authorities tried to get Purdy and Binkley to reveal the whereabouts of their fellow gang members, Adams and Isabel were never caught. Popular legend has it that Binkley killed the two soldiers assigned to guard him and threw their bodies into one of Yellowstone's geysers. Salt Lake Tribune, March 13, 1955.

68. U.S. Department of the Interior, Annual Report of the Acting Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park, 1908, 12–14; Haines, Yellowstone Story, 2:149–53.

69. U.S. Department of the Interior, Annual Report of the Acting Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park, 1915, 23; Brett to Nelson, February 5, 1915, “Protection, 1908–1914,” Item 105, YNPA.

70. Livingston (Mont.) Enterprise, February 9, 1915.

71. “Notes of the Yellowstone Park,” Forest and Stream 69 (December 28, 1907): 1020; U.S. Department of the Interior, Annual Report of the Acting Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park, 1909, by Harry C. Benson (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1909), 9.

72. U.S. Department of the Interior, Annual Report of the Acting Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park, 1911, by Lloyd M. Brett (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1911), 9; U.S. Department of the Interior, Annual Report of the Acting Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park, 1912, 9; U.S. Department of the Interior, Annual Report of the Acting Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park, 1913, by Lloyd M. Brett (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1913), 10.

73. Haines, Yellowstone Story, 2:68–72; “Notes from the National Park,” Forest and Stream 43 (August 11, 1894): 119; U.S. Department of the Interior, Annual Report of the Superintendent of National Parks, 1916, 36.

74. Benson to Secretary of the Interior, April 12, 1909, “Undesirables in Park, 1909–1913,” Item 78, YNPA; Erwin to Bussear, November 25, 1897, “Letters Sent, October 1, 1897-November 9, 1898,” Bound Volume VII, Item 219, YNPA; U.S. Department of the Interior, Annual Report of the Acting Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park, 1897, 27–28.

75. Livingston (Mont.) Enterprise, December 11, 1897, and February 19, 1898. The parenthetical question mark occurs in the original.

76. “Record of Violations of Rules and Regulations, 1887–1921,” 21, 27, Item 145, YNPA.

77. U.S. Department of the Interior, Annual Report of the Acting Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park, 1915, 23.

78. In present-day Kenya, Masai warriors have engaged in similar protest behavior, spearing elephants and rhinoceroses in protected parks and then leaving the animals to rot. Tribe members, as one Masai explains, were “turning against wild animals because now they have been brought up to realize that the main cause of their sufferings is wild animals.” Quoted in James Hunter, On the Other Side of Sorrow: Nature and People in the Scottish Highlands (Edinburgh:

79. Archer, By a Flash and a Scare, 198–221. For a more extensive discussion of the symbology of animal killing, see Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York: Vintage, 1984), 75–104. Park authorities reported that less than five pounds of meat was taken from the dead elk. Furthermore, the elk killed were two cows and three “spikes” (juvenile animals), all of whose tusks had little or no value. Livingston (Mont.) Enterprise, February 9 and February 13, 1915.

80. Gardiner (Mont.) Wonderland, May 17, 1902. My insights on revenge killing come from Archer, By a Flash and a Scare, 220.

81. Livingston (Mont.) Enterprise, February 9 and February 13, 1915.

82. Anderson's comments may be found in U.S. Congress, House, Inquiry into the Management and Control of the Yellowstone National Park, 213.