ROUNDUPJUNE 2019 WILD WEST 11‘They are strong and
we are weak. We are
few, they are many.
...We can never forget
these homes, but an
unbending, iron neces-
sity tells us we must
leave them. I would
willingly die to pre-
serve them, but any
forcible effort to keep
them will cost us our
lands, our lives and
the lives of our children.
There is but one path
of safety, one road to
future existence as a na-
tion. That path is open
before you. Make a
treaty of cession. Give
up these lands and go
over beyond the great
Father of Waters’—Cherokee leader
Major Ridge said this
in December 1835 in
support of the Treaty
of New Echota, in
which the Cherokees
would sell their land
east of the Mississippi
and move west. On
making his mark,
Major Ridge added,
“I have signed my
death warrant.”
Indeed, a disaffected
Cherokee faction
murdered him on
June 22, 1839.WEST
WORDS
More than 1,500 items from the Robert G. McCubbin Collection sold at Brian Lebel’s Old
West Auction in Mesa, Ariz., on Jan. 25 and 26, 2018. Arizona historian Richard Weddle,
who often writes about Billy the Kid and covered the auction for Wild West, reports that
McCubbin’s premier photography collection realized more than $1.7 million, his artifacts/
document collection nearly $600,000. Items from other collectors brought the overall
weekend auction total to more than $3.1 million.
At the first night auction of McCubbin’s photo collection, John Wesley Hardin’s per-
sonal album (including two images of the gunfighter) brought the highest bid, at $129,800.
(A separate tintype of Hardin sold for $64,900.) Not far behind was a portrait of the “Fort
Worth Five,” aka Wild Bunch, which sold for $118,000. A cabinet card of Ben Thompson
inscribed to fellow gunfighter King Fisher hammered down at $94,400, while a carte de
visite of mountain man Jim Beckwourth went for $70,800. A signed early carte de visite
of promising dentist Doc Holliday brought $59,000. “We felt the sale was gangbusters,”
said Brian Lebel’s wife and partner, Melissa McCracken-Lebel, “indicative of how strong
the current photography market is.”
On the second night artifacts from McCubbin’s collection realized the highest prices.
Topping all bids was the knife Billy the Kid reportedly had in hand at the Maxwell family
house in Fort Sumner, New Mexico Territory, on July 14, 1881, when Pat Garrett shot him.
It brought a respectable $118,000, though that was a far cry from the presale estimate of
$800,000 to $1.2 million. A straight razor belonging to Wild Bill Hickok sold for $10,030,
also well below its presale estimate of $70,000 to $80,000. Picking up the slack was an ice
mallet Wells Fargo messenger David Trousdale used to kill outlaw Ben Kilpatrick in 1912,
which realized $64,900, exceeding the low estimate of $50,000. About 30 documents related
to the history of Lincoln County, N.M., had been pulled from the auction, as New Mexico
Attorney General Hector Balderas claimed they were the property of the state.
“Bob McCubbin has been a student and collector of the Old West since the early 1950s,
when he was a teenager,” says San Francisco–based collector and award-winning author
John Boessenecker. “His collection of photos of Old West outlaws, lawmen and other nota-
bles was the largest in the United States. On the one hand, I hated to see Bob’s collection
broken up, but on the other hand, it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to acquire great
rarities from the history of the American West.”
“The auction felt like the end of an era,” echoed Nicholas Narog, a collector from St. Paul,
Minn., who among other items won a carte de visite image of the bodies of Bill Chadwell
and Clell Miller after the James-Younger gang’s ill-fated 1876 bank raid in Northfield, Minn.
“Nearly every publication on the American Old West used an image that once belonged to
this great collection. There was a general sense of disappointment from those who wished
to see the collection donated to museums.”MCCUBBIN COLLECTION SOLD
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Bob McCubbin relaxes
in his Santa Fe home.