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Hello Joe, You Old Buffalo: Skulls, Brand Books, and Westerners
JO TICE BLOOM
For more than sixty years, Westerners have been researching, writing, sharing, and having fun with the history of the American West. Westerners were among the founders of the Western History Association. This article discusses Westerners and Westerners International, the umbrella organization.
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FOLK HEROES AND THE ROMANCE OF THE WILD have always stirred minds and imaginations—consider Greek mythology or Robin Hood or the Nordic sagas. In our American history, the folk traditions have often been obscured by the written histories of our past. Thus, we have few folk heroes from the early colonial period. The new nation, however, blossomed with Daniel Boone, Simon Girty, George Rogers Clark, and Major Robert Rogers. Consider the homage being paid to William Clark and Meriwether Lewis these days. We love our heroic figures who moved through the West, generating stories of their adventures, the land, and the people they encountered. |
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Out of this heritage came the Westerners. Founded in 1944 in Chicago by Great Plains natives inhabiting a foreign urban society, the Westerners sought to evoke the romance and the heroes—the Jules Sandozes, the Kit Carsons, the cowboys. But they were also devoted to accurate and unprejudiced history. |
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Those founders, journalists Leland Case and Don Russell, and professors Ray Allen Billington and Elmo Scott Watson, among others, decided to meet once a month over dinner and to have a paper or talk about the American West. For them, as for us, it was to be an evening of good history, good conversation, good food, and good camaraderie. As the Chicago group organized, they named themselves a corral and elected a sheriff, a deputy sheriff, a keeper of marks and brands, etc., to lead them. A trail boss would roundup new members. There would be no constitution, no bylaws, just a posse to run affairs. When incorporated to conform to Illinois laws, the corral stated their purpose was simply "Fun and Scholarship." Early on, the corral acquired a buffalo skull from the Great Plains, and today members still open in the evening with the unveiling of the skull, named Joe, and a toast, "Hello, Joe, you old buffalo." When the skull is covered and saluted with "Adios, Joe, you old buffalo," the meeting ends. |
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Naturally, other men heard about the Chicago Corral. Soon, corrals popped up in Denver (1944), Los Angeles (1946), New York, (1952), Washington, DC (1954), London (1954), and other places. As the informal organizations grew, each adopted its own traditions. As David Dary wrote in 2003, the Denver Posse "established the principle that each group of Westerners was to be independent of all other groups."?1 And this has been the case ever since. |
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By 1958, when Westerners International was born, corrals were active in Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, St. Louis, New York City, Tucson, Laramie, Kansas City, and Spokane, along with the Black Hills Corral, the Potomac Corral, the English Society, and the French Corral. Leland Case, who played father, mentor, and overall sheriff to these groups, conceived the idea of an umbrella organization that would keep corrals in touch, help new corrals get started, and offer prizes for outstanding historical contributions by corral members. Thus was born Westerners International (WI). |
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Case lived in Stockton, California, and established the Home Ranch there. Later the Home Ranch moved to Tucson with Leland and then, after his death, to Oklahoma City, where it is housed in the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum. The Home Ranch is WI's "headquarters." Dedicated volunteers keep the Home Ranch running. |
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