William Brocius

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William "Curly Bill" Brocius or Brocious as spellings vary, (ca. 1857-March 24, 1882) was a western outlaw, gunman and member of the "Cow-boys" outlaw gang of the Tombstone area in the Arizona Territory during the early to mid-1880's.

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[edit] Notoriety as an outlaw and gunfighter

Brocius is sometimes confused with "Curly Bill" Graham, who was a different outlaw of the same general place and period. Curly Bill Graham was killed in a gunfight with deputy sheriff James D. Houck October 17, 1887, buried in Young, Arizona, and is almost certainly not the Curly Bill of Charleston and Tombstone.

In newspapers of the time Brocius is usually known simply as Curly Bill, but later history has also referred to him by the spelling of Curley Bill. The spelling of "Brocious" has also been used (including in modern movies), but "Brocius" is the name the outlaw used for his maildrop in the Arizona Territory, according to one published letter of the time. Brocius is probably an alias. His birth name (including middle initial) and date of birth remains unknown.

Stories that Brocius once had a wife and children and paid another man to fight in the American Civil War for him, all arise from unverifiable claims in a letter that somebody (later untraceable) once sent to historian Ben Traywick. They are based on the very poorest of evidence, and are often disregarded.

No known photograph of Brocius exists, but from description he was known to have been a big man, well-built, with curly black hair, and of freckled complexion.

Brocius is described by contemporary Billy Breakenridge in his book Helldorado as being the most deadly pistol shot of the Cow-boys, able to hit running jackrabbits, shoot out candle flames without breaking the candles or lantern holders, and able to shoot quarters from between the fingers of "volunteers." When drunk, Brocius was also known for a mean sense of humor, and for such "practical jokes" as using gunfire to make a preacher "dance" during a sermon, or making Mexicans at a community dance take off their clothes and dance naked. (Both incidents were reported by Wells, Fargo agent Fred Hume in this memoirs, and both incidents are alluded to in the newspapers of the time).

[edit] Arrival in Tombstone, confrontations with Wyatt Earp

Brocius probably came immediately to the Arizona Territory from Texas around 1878 after arriving at the San Carlos Reservation with a herd of cattle, but his earlier history is a matter of question. Wyatt Earp, from conversations with Brocius while transporting him to Tucson for trial for shooting sheriff White in 1880 (see below), thought he was an escaped outlaw from El Paso, Texas, where he had his right ear shot through by Texas Ranger, (and later, Asst. Marshal) Thomas Mode. (El Paso Daily Times, 18 July 1883)

These conversations with Earp were reported in the Tombstone Epitaph at the time. According to Earp, Curly Bill had asked him about lawyers during the journey, and Earp had recommended a man named Zabriski. Curly Bill had said he couldn't use Zabriski because Zabriski had years earlier been his state prosecutor for a crime he had been convicted of in El Paso, Texas-- a robbery in which a man had been killed. Later historical work based in this fact has linked "Brocius" with a man then known as William "Curly Bill" Bresnaham, who was convicted in a Texas robbery attempt (1878) with another known "Cow-boy" of the early Tombstone area, named Robert Martin (see external link below). These men were convicted and sentenced to 5 years in prison, but both escaped, presumably to the southwest Arizona Territory. Since both Robert Martin and Curly Bill became known as leaders of the rustlers in Arizona Territory, they are almost certainly the same Robert Martin and Curly Bill of the Texas crime.

According to author Robert Utley, Robert Martin was a member of the Jesse Evans gang of outlaws in New Mexico during the mid to late 1870's. Billy the Kid briefly joined this group before going to work for John Tunstall. Evans' gang, a loosely-knit consortium of desperadoes known as "The Boys", would end up fighting against The Regulators during the Lincoln County War. Due to the time frame, location, and his friendship with Martin, Curly Bill Brocius may have been a member of the Evans gang as well. Perhaps tellingly, when Brocius was shot in Galeyville in 1881, he derided his attacker, Jim Wallace, as a "Lincoln County sonofabitch".

Wyatt (with a deputy) was transporting Brocius by buckboard to Tucson for trial after the October 27, 1880 shooting of 31 year-old Tombstone town marshal Fred White, following an incident where Brocius's gun discharged accidentally, while he was drunk and surrendering it to White. Brocius allegedly deeply regretted the incident, and reportedly liked White personally. He was arrested immediately after the incident by Wyatt Earp, who "buffaloed" him (hit him over the head with a pistol barrel) in the process. Wyatt Earp, acting in his capacity as deputy sheriff of Pima County, Arizona, then took Brocius to Tucson the next day for trial, possibly averting a lynching. Brocius waived his right to a preliminary hearing, which is good evidence he wanted to get out of town.

Virgil Earp would briefly succeed White as town marshal for a period of less than two weeks. However, U.S. deputy marshal Virgil Earp was not present at the White shooting, and held no city or county law enforcement post at that time.

White died two days after being shot, by which time Brocius was in jail in Tucson. Although formally charged with the murder of White, and spending most of November and December 1880 in jail awaiting trial, Brocius was finally acquitted with a verdict of accidental death. In favor of Brocius' case was that White himself, before he died from his wound, had testified that he thought the pistol had gone off by accident, and that he did not believe the shooting was intentional. Wyatt Earp also testified in favor of Brocius -- an irony, given their later deadly feud.

[edit] Associations with the Clanton gang

Brocius was known as a rustler, but for a time, he also worked as a tax collection agent for Cochise County Sheriff Johnny Behan, making other rustlers pay taxes on their stolen cattle (the money went into the sheriff's coffers and added to his salary).

On May 26, 1881, Brocius was shot by a compadre after an argument in Galeyville. The bullet passed though his neck and out the opposite cheek. Though the bullet must have passed very near many vital structures, Brocius survived. He was by this time an outlaw of considerable reputation, and although referred to as a gunfighter, most of his shootings happened during drunken brawls or robberies.

In July, 1881 Brocius and gunfighter Johnny Ringo were said to have gone to Hauchita, New Mexico, to kill William and Isaac Haslett in revenge for the deaths of Clanton members Bill Leonard and Harry Head, who had attempted to rob the Haslett brothers' general store weeks earlier. Later in July, Brocius was said to have led an ambush attacking a Mexican trail herd in the San Luis Pass killing six vaqueros and torturing the remaining eight men.

There is no way of historically verifying these stories however, and Brocius was not charged with the crimes. These events, like the Haslett killings, also occurred quite near the time of Brocius' very serious wound, so his involvement in them is somewhat questionable. Diarist George Parsons saw Brocius on October 6 at the ranch of the McLaury brothers in the Sulphur Spring Valley, while Parsons was riding as part of an Indian scouting party, and noted that even by then, Curly Bill was well enough to ride, but had not yet completely recovered from his wound of 5 months before.

Following the death of Old Man Clanton (Newman Haynes Clanton) in the Guadalupe Canyon Massacre on August 13, 1881, Brocius became a primary leader in the very loose-knit cow-boy gang. Parson's refers to Brocius as "Arizona's most famous outlaw" in early October, 1881. However, despite many reports since, the Cow-Boy gang was not closely organized. They had a loose gang-based association, but broke off into several small groups, and outlaw acts committed by them were rarely heavily planned or coordinated. Therefore, Brocius' leading of the gang was not by iron fist, nor did he either approve or disapprove actions members of the gang became involved in. The gang was, more than anything else, a collection of independent outlaws that used their association with the Cow-Boys as a base of operations.

[edit] Gunfight at the OK Corral and after

Following the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in October, 1881, Brocius may have participated in the attempt to kill Virgil Earp and (more probably) the later assassination of Morgan Earp. Again, however, Brocius was not charged, as there were no eye witnesses to either crime.

After the killing of Frank Stilwell by the Earp party in Tucson on March 20, 1882 during the now famous Earp vendetta ride, Brocius was deputized, given a warrant issued for Wyatt Earp by Sheriff Johnny Behan, and sent to bring back Earp, who was in the Whetstone Mountains outside town.

Earp, who was also looking for Brocius in revenge for the death of his brother Morgan, encountered Curly Bill on March 24, 1882 at Iron Springs (today's maps show this as Mescal Springs). Brocius was camping outside his tent near the springs, and was surprised while in the act of cooking over a campfire. It may have been Wyatt's good fortune that Brocius, an excellent pistol shot, chose to use a shotgun as his first weapon (he may not have been wearing his pistol). In the gunfight that followed, Wyatt killed Brocius with a double shotgun blast to the chest from a range of about 50 feet. Brocius narrowly missed his own shot, hitting only Wyatt's long winter coat.

Wyatt's account from memory, 45 years later, of the fight at Iron Springs, given to biographers John Flood (unpublished manuscript-- see link below) and Stuart Lake (Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal) matches in all essential details an account of the fight given separately by a jailed Doc Holliday to a newspaper in Denver in May, 1882, just two months after the fight (and while Wyatt was in Gunnison, Colorado). If the fight at Iron Springs didn't happen much as Wyatt told it, it is difficult to explain how Earp would remember a fiction made up with Holliday, after nearly half a century, as well as if it had actually happened. Therefore, it is generally believed to be fact.

After Brocius' death, his friends were said by John Flood to have buried the body on the nearby Frank Patterson ranch on the Babocomari River. This land, close to the original McLaury ranch-site before the McLaurys moved to the Sulphur Springs Valley in late 1880, originally is believed to have previously belonged to Frank Stilwell, and is located on the river about five miles west of Fairbank. If Brocius' body is there, in a still-wild section of country, the gravesite has been lost. Some claimed that Curly Bill escaped, changed his name, and went (back) to Texas. However, he was never seen again in Tombstone after March 24, 1882, despite a $2,000 reward later put up by the Tombstone Epitaph for an authentic interview and sighting of him alive.

Tombstone historian Ben Traywick has argued that this was too much money for a man like Brocius to turn down for a chance to tweak the Earps and their supporters in the bargain, especially since he was not wanted by the law in Arizona for any crime, and had no reason to disappear when he did (and certainly no reason to go back to Texas, where he actually was probably a wanted man). In any case, the money offered by the Tombstone Epitaph was never claimed.

[edit] Portrayals in film

[edit] Resources

  • Sifakis, Carl. Encyclopedia of American Crime. New York: Facts on File Inc., 1982.

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../w/i/l/William_Brocius_35bb.html"