Tom horn autobiography

This is a Non-Fiction Auto-Biography written by Tom Horn who was born November 21st 1860 in Memphis, Missouri on a family farm.
Horn's attorneys filed a petition with the Wyoming Supreme Court for a new trial.
This collection contains Tom Horn's autobiography, Life of Tom Horn by Himself, based on his writings and testimony of friends and correspondence from Mrs. John.

•

Archives West Finding Aid

Restrictions on Use

The researcher assumes full responsibility for observing all copyright, property, and libel laws as they apply.

Restrictions on Use

Statement on Potentially Harmful Language and Images Found in Collections

The American Heritage Center aspires to approach all areas of our work in ways that are respectful to those who create, use, and are represented in our collections. For a variety of reasons, however, users may encounter offensive or harmful language or images in some of our finding aids, catalogs, and collection materials.

Note that the AHC does not censor or alter contents of the collections as they provide context and evidence of a time, people, place, or event. Therefore, we encourage users to bring questions and concerns about descriptions in our finding aids to our attention via email or anonymous web-form. For more information, read our full statement.

Preferred Citation

Item Description, Box Number, Folder Number, Collection Name, Collection Number, American Heritage Center,

•

I, Tom Horn

In I, Tom Horn, originally published in 1975, Will Henry presents a fictional autobiography of Tom Horn that answers decisively the question—did Tom Horn kill fourteen-year-old Willie Nickell, or was he framed?

Horn was a cavalry scout in Arizona Territory during the last Apache campaigns, a champion rodeo rider, a Pinkerton, and finally a stock detective in Wyoming. Known and feared as el hombre de sombra (the shadow man), Horn’s lifetime (1860–1903) spans one of the most colorful and tumultuous periods of the Old West. In this novel Will Henry provides a multidimensional portrait of Tom Horn as a man capable of humor, compassion, and love, and also one who could kill without the least remorse. This figure is set against equally compelling portraits of Al Sieber, chief of scouts under General Crook, and apache leaders in the Four Families of the Chiricahuas, names now fabled in American frontier history Nana, Chato, and Geronimo.

•

Life of Tom Horn: Government Scout and Interpreter

October 6, 2021

On a shelf labeled “Books Written in Prison” you might find an odd assortment of volumes: The Consolation of Philosophy, Le More d’Arthur, Pilgrim’s Progress, the Marquis de Sade’s Justine, Wilde’s De Profundis, Hitler’s Mein Kampf, Jean Genet’s Our Lady of the Flowers, and Martin Luther King Jr’s Letter from Birmingham Jail. You might also find Tom Horn’s Life of Tom Horn, Government Scout and Interpreter, which he wrote in his cell before he was hanged for murder.

Horn’s autobiography never addresses the events that put him behind bars. He didn’t write it to justify himself or argue his innocence. Whether or not he killed 14-year-old Willie Nickell on a Wyoming ranch in 1901 is still debated. But he’d killed enough men in his life that Horn might have felt, one way or another, he’d earned that noose. In his book Horn is not making a bid for exoneration but a bid for immortality. He lassoes a comet named Geronimo.

Horn had come to know Geronimo during the Apache Wars, when he was a young scout