LibGuides: Spur Awards: Western Biography

SPUR Awards

Best Western Biography

2020s

WINNER

Nighthawk Rising: a biography of accused cattle rustler Queen Ann Bassett of Brown's Park by Diana Allen Kouris

FINALISTS:

Washington Territory's Grand Lady the story of Matilda (GLover) Koontz Jackson by Julie McDonald Zander
Political Hell-Raiser: the life and times of Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana by Marc C. Johnson

WINNER

Tecumseh and the Prophet by Peter Cozzens

Tecumseh and the Prophet by Peter Cozzens
Call Number: BIO TECUM FAM C (Adult Biography)
ISBN: 9781524733254
Publication Date: 2020-10-27
The riveting story of the Shawnee brothers who led the last great pan-Indian confederacy against the United States.

FINALISTS:

An Honest Enemy by Paul Magid
Race and the Wild West by Laura J. Arata

Race and the Wild West : Sarah Bickford, the Montana Vigilantes, and the tourism of decline, 1879-1930 by Laura J. Arata
Call Number: BIO BICKF SAR A (Adult biography)
ISBN: 9780806164977
Publication Date: 2020-07-02
The biography of Sarah Bickford, born a slave in Tennessee, who became the first African American female public utilities owner of the Virginia City Water Company and spent three decades promoting tourism at a historic building where the Montana Vigilantes lynched five men.

WINNER

The Forgotten Botanist: Sara Plummer Lemmon's Life of Science and Art by Wynne Brown

The Forgotten Botanist : Sara Plummer Lemmon's life of science and art by Wynne Brown
Call Number: BIO LEMMO SARP B (Adult fiction)
ISBN: 9781496222817
Publication Date: 2021-11-01
Tells the story of Sara Lemmon, a little-known and under-appreciated woman of both science and art, who did much of the botanical work attributed to her husband, John Lemmon, and in addition, her gift for drawing in the field, combined with her thirst for scientific knowledge, made her "one of the most accurate painters of nature in the State [of California].

FINALISTS:

Cockeyed Happy: Ernest Hemingway's Wyoming summers with Pauline by Darla Worden
Jim Bridger: trailblazer of the American West by Jerry Enzler

Jim Bridger : trailblazer of the American West by Jerry Enzler
Call Number: BIO BRIDG JIM E (Adult biography)
ISBN: 9780806168630
Publication Date: 2021-04-29
Even among iconic frontiersmen like John C. Frémont, Kit Carson, and Jedediah Smith, Jim Bridger stands out. A mountain man of the American West, straddling the fur trade era and the age of exploration, he lived the life legends are made of. His adventures are fit for remaking into the tall tales Bridger himself liked to tell. Here, in a biography that finally gives this outsize character his due, Jerry Enzler takes this frontiersman's full measure for the first time--and tells a story that would do Jim Bridger proud. Born in 1804 and orphaned at thirteen, Bridger made his first western foray in 1822, traveling up the Missouri River with Mike Fink and a hundred enterprising young men to trap beaver. At twenty he 'discovered' the Great Salt Lake. At twenty-one he was the first to paddle the Bighorn River's Bad Pass. At twenty-two he explored the wonders of Yellowstone. In the following years, he led trapping brigades into Blackfeet territory; guided expeditions of Smithsonian scientists, topographical engineers, and army leaders; and, though he could neither read nor write, mapped the tribal boundaries for the Great Indian Treaty of 1851. Enzler charts Bridger's path from the fort he built on the Oregon Trail to the route he blazed for Montana gold miners to avert war with Red Cloud and his Lakota coalition. Along the way he married into the Flathead, Ute, and Shoshone tribes and produced seven children. Tapping sources uncovered in the six decades since the last documented Bridger biography, Enzler's book fully conveys the drama and details of the larger-than-life history of the 'King of the Mountain Men.' This is the definitive story of an extraordinary life.

WINNER: Before Billy the Kid : the Boy Behind the Legendary Outlaw by Melody Graves

Before Billy the Kid : the boy behind the legendary outlaw by Melody Groves
Call Number: BIO BONNE WILH G (Adult biography)
ISBN: 9781493063499
Publication Date: 2022-08-01
Explores the early life of the infamous outlaw, the teenage boy who loved to sing and dance. The young man who was polite, educated, and popular. A boy who had the bad luck to be orphaned at fifteen and left with no one to guide him through life. How different history might have been if Billy had pursued his love of music instead of a life of crime.

FINALISTS:

Country Never Trod : William Lewis Manly's 1849 Voyage Down Utah's Green River by Michael D. Kane
King Fisher : the Short Life and Elusive Legend of a Texas Desperado by Chuck Parsons and Thomas C, Bicknell
Raphael Pumpelly's Arizona : the Frontier Adventures of a Young Mining Engineer by C. Gilbert Storms

Country Never Trod : William Lew Manly's 1849 voyage down Utah's Green River by Michael D. Kane
Call Number: BIO MANLY WILL K (Adult biography)
ISBN: 9781493060955
Publication Date: 2022-09-01
Born in Vermont, William Lewis Manly was drawn out west by the lure of gold. Previous scholarship claims that the Yankee frontiersman floated only 292 miles to the Uinta Basin, but author Michael D. Kane's research of primary source materials suggests that Manly went 150 miles further, all the way to what is now Green River, Utah. If this was the case, then Manly's exploration of the Green River would have taken place twenty years before John Wesley Powell's famous "first" expedition. Determined to prove his theory and establish Manly's legacy as a trailblazer, Kane conducted research, and then built his own wooden canoes and made the trip, tracing Manly's footsteps and comparing notes with the earlier traveler. Country Never Trod: William Lewis Manly's 1949 Voyage Down the Green River shadows Manly's little-known expedition down the Green River and his overland trek through some of the most desolate stretches of Utah, interspersed with Kane's journal entries and photographs documenting his own trip.
King Fisher : the short life and elusive legend of a Texas desperado by Chuck Parsons; Thomas C. Bicknell
Call Number: BIO FISHE KIN PB (Adult biography)
ISBN: 9781574418613
Publication Date: 2022-07-19
America's Wild West created an untold number of notorious characters, and in southwestern Texas, John King Fisher (1855-1884) was foremost among them. To friends and foes alike, he insisted he be called "King." He found a home in the tough sun-beaten Nueces Strip, a lawless land between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande. There he gathered a gang of rustlers around him at his ranch on Pendencia Creek. For a decade King and his gang raided both sides of the Rio Grande, shooting down any who opposed them. Newspapers claimed King killed potential witnesse--he was never convicted of cattle or horse stealing, or murder. King's reign ended when he was arrested by Texas Ranger Captain Leander McNelly. In no uncertain terms he advised Fisher to change his ways, so King became deputy sheriff of Uvalde County. But his hard-won respectability would not last. On a spring night in 1884, King made the mistake of accompanying the truly notorious gambler and gunfighter Ben Thompson on a tour of San Antonio, where several years prior Thompson shot down Jack Harris at the latter's saloon and theater, the Vaudeville. Recklessly, King Fisher accompanied Thompson back to the theater, where assassins were waiting. When the smoke cleared, Fisher was stretched out beside Thompson, dead from thirteen gunshot wounds.
Raphael Pumpelly's Arizona : the frontier adventures of ayoung mining engineer by C. Gilbert Storms
Call Number: 979.104 S885r (Adult nonfiction)
ISBN: 9781627879033
Publication Date: 2022-01-29
Raphael Pumpelly came to the mountains south of Tucson, Arizona, in 1860 as a young mining engineer looking for adventure. He was just twenty-three years old and a recent graduate of the prestigious Royal Mining Academy in Germany. During his time in the Southwest, Pumpelly learned how to mine silver in Arizona and how to survive in the lawless environment of the borderlands. He met miners, ranchers, soldiers, bandits, Mexican revolutionaries, and raiding Apaches in a territory where there was no law enforcement and no effective military force to oppose the attacks of hostile Indians. After he left Arizona, he became an internationally renowned geologist, a consultant to foreign governments on geology and mining, a pioneering researcher in geoarchaeology, and a professor of geology and mining at Harvard. But it all began in Arizona. An adventurer and a talented storyteller, Raphael Pumpelly's accounts stand alongside the best American pioneer writers. With lively prose and vivid detail depicting the people and events shaping the Grand Canyon State, his writings have been an invaluable resource for historians of Arizona in the chaotic years between the Gadsden Purchase in 1854 and the start of the Civil War. Raphael Pumpelly’s Arizona explores how life used to be on the western range and is a must-read for anyone interested in one of the last places to be modernized in America -- Arizona.

WINNER: Sacajawea : Mystery, Myth, and Legend by Candy Moulton

FINALISTS

Oracle of Lost Causes : John Newman Edwards and His Never-Ending Civil War by Matthew Christopher Hulbert
Unrepentant Dakota Woman : Angelique Renville and the Struggle for Indigenous Identity, 1845-1876 by Linda M. Clemmons

Unrepentant Dakota Woman by Linda M. Clemmons
Call Number: BIO RENVI ANG C
ISBN: 9781941813485
Publication Date: 2023
Born in Minnesota in 1845 into a prominent mixed-blood Dakota family, Angelique Renville (1845-1876) initially learned traditional Dakota ways of life from her relatives while navigating the complex multi-cultural world of the declining fur trade. At age six, she and her younger sister Agnes were adopted by Protestant missionaries Stephen and Mary Riggs, who did their utmost to erase her Dakota identity and educate her as a "proper" Christian woman. Despite the Riggs's best efforts, Angelique remained close with her Dakota kin, especially her mother and siblings. After a frustrating year at a female seminary in Ohio, Angelique worked as a domestic servant for a Riggs family friend, ostensibly continuing her education. The outbreak of the U.S.-Dakota War in 1862 and Agnes's subsequent death at a U.S. Army prison camp changed everything. Returning to Minnesota, Angelique turned her back on the missionaries, entered a polygamous marriage with a Dakota man, and moved with her relatives to the Dakota Territory, where she increasingly distanced herself from the Riggs family. In 1869, she took legal action to emancipate herself from the guardianship of Stephen Riggs and to seek legal redress against unscrupulous loan sharks who had illegally sold her lands. This was an extraordinary act for an American Indian woman of the time, and she faced a steep uphill battle in court. Until her untimely death from tuberculosis in 1876, Angelique Renville lived her adult years on her own terms. Author Linda M. Clemmons works from extensive primary sources, including letters written by Angelique herself -- a rarity for American Indian women who are all too often silenced or ignored in the written historical record. Unrepentant Dakota Woman follows Angelique's remarkable struggle for indigenous identity and self-determination while revealing new insights into relations among missionaries and their converts, education of American Indians, disparities between Native and Euro-American conceptions of family, and the challenges faced by Dakotas during one of the most tumultuous periods in their history.

2010s

WINNER

Peg Leg by David C. Humphrey

Peg Leg : the improbable life of a Texas hero, Thomas WIlliam Ward, 1807-1872 by David C. Humphrey
Call Number: BIO WARD THOW H (Adult biography)
ISBN: 9780876112373
Publication Date: 2009-05-28
In spite of losing his right leg to cannon fire in an early battle of the Mexican/Texan War of 1835-36, Thomas "Pegleg" Ward remained in the Texian military until he lost his right arm to cannon fire as well. He established himself as a remarkable political figure as he made significant contributions to the Texian cause through his administration of the General Land Office. "Pegleg" was able to persevere and amass large holdings of land and distinguish himself in service to his country and his state. Politically some despised him for his integrity, and his loyalty to Sam Houston. Others despised him because of his obstinence in doing things the way he thought best and having little flexibility to accommodate other's point of view. He was proud and he was stubborn, both good qualities for a Texan of that era.

FINALISTS:

As Big as the West: the pioneer life of Granville Stuart by Clyde Miller & Carol O'Connor
Mormon Convert/Mormon Defector: a Scottish immigrant in the American West by Polly Aird

WINNER

Wolf: the lives of Jack London by James Haley

FINALISTS:

Wild Horse Annie and the Last of the Mustangs by David Cruise & Allison Griffiths
Bandido: the life and times of Tiburcio Vasquez by John Boessenecker

WINNER

George Crook by Paul Magid

FINALISTS:

Ned Wynkoop and the Lonely Road from Sand Creek by Louis Kraft
Will Rogers: a political life by Richard D. White

Will Rogers : a political life by Richard D. White; Richard D. White
Call Number: BIO ROGER WIL W (Adult biography)
ISBN: 9780896726765
Publication Date: 2011-02-10
A political biography of Will Rogers; argues that not only was Rogers the nation's most popular humorist, he was also his era's foremost political critic. Presents Rogers in a previously unexplored light: that of a true political insider with the power to shape public opinion and ultimately alter public policy.

WINNER

Geronimo by Robert M. Utley

Geronimo by Robert M. Utley
Call Number: BIO GERON APA U (Adult biography)
ISBN: 9780300126389
Publication Date: 2012-11-15
Notorious for his ferocity in battle and uncanny ability to elude capture, the Apache fighter Geronimo became a legend in his own time and remains an iconic figure of the nineteenth century American West. In Geronimo, renowned historian Robert M. Utley digs beneath the myths and rumors to produce an authentic and thoroughly researched portrait of the man whose unique talents and human shortcomings swept him into the fierce storms of history.

FINALISTS:

Ho! For the Black Hills: Captain Jack Crawford reports the Black Hills gold rush and the Great Sioux War by Paul L. Hedren
"That Fiend in Hell": Soapy Smith in legend by Catherine Holder Spude

WINNER

Jack London: an American life by Earle Labor

Jack London : an American Life by Earle Labor
Call Number: BIO LONDO JAC L (Adult biography)
ISBN: 9780374534912
Publication Date: 2014-10-14
Jack London was born a working class, fatherless Californian in 1876. In his youth, he was a boundlessly energetic adventurer on the bustling West Coast―an oyster pirate, a hobo, a sailor, and a prospector by turns. He spent his brief life rapidly accumulating the experiences that would inform his acclaimed bestselling books The Call of the Wild, White Fang, and The Sea-Wolf. The bare outlines of his story suggest a classic rags-to-riches tale, but London the man was plagued by contradictions. He chronicled nature at its most savage, but wept helplessly at the deaths of his favorite animals. At his peak the highest paid writer in the United States, he was nevertheless forced to work under constant pressure for money. An irrepressibly optimistic crusader for social justice and a lover of humanity, he was also subject to spells of bitter invective, especially as his health declined. Branded by shortsighted critics as little more than a hack who produced a couple of memorable dog stories, he left behind a voluminous literary legacy, much of it ripe for rediscovery.

FINALISTS:

Cowboy Stuntman: from Olympic gold to the silver screen by Dean Smith with Mike Cox
In the Shadow of Billy the Kid: Susan McSween and the Lincoln County War by Kathleen P. Chamberlain

WINNER

Son of Dewey Beard: last survivor of the Little Bighorn by Philp Burnham

FINALISTS:

Tom Horn in Life and Legend by Larry D. Ball
The Life and Legends of Calamity Jane by Richard W. Etulain

WINNER

Custer's Trials: a life on the frontier of a New America by T. J. Stiles

Custer's Trials : a life on the frontier of a new America by T. J. Stiles
Call Number: BIO CUSTE GEOA S (Adult biography)
ISBN: 9780307592644
Publication Date: 2015-10-27
In this magisterial biography, T. J. Stiles paints a portrait of Custer both deeply personal and sweeping in scope, proving how much of Custer’s legacy has been ignored. He demolishes Custer’s historical caricature, revealing a capable yet insecure man, intelligent yet bigoted, passionate yet self-destructive, a romantic individualist at odds with the institution of the military (court-martialed twice in six years) and the new corporate economy, a wartime emancipator who rejected racial equality. Stiles argues that, although Custer was justly noted for his exploits on the western frontier, he also played a central role as both a wide-ranging participant and polarizing public figure in his extraordinary, transformational time—a time of civil war, emancipation, brutality toward Native Americans, and, finally, the Industrial Revolution—even as he became one of its casualties. Intimate, dramatic, and provocative, this biography captures the larger story of the changing nation. It casts surprising new light on one of the best-known figures of American history, a subject of seemingly endless fascination.
Custer's Trials [E-Book] : a life on the frontier of a new America by T. J. Stiles
Call Number: BIO CUSTE GEOA S Ebook (OverDrive)
ISBN: 9781101875841
Publication Date: 2015

FINALISTS:

The Gray Fox: George Crook and the Indian Wars by Paul Magid
Juan Bautista De Anza: the King's governor in New Mexico by Carlos R. Herrera

WINNER

Black Elk: the life of an American visionary by Joe Jackson

FINALISTS:

Texas Ranger: the epic life of Frank Hamer, the man who killed Bonnie and Clyde by John Boessenecker
Nobody Rich or Famous: a family memoir by Richard Shelton

Texas Ranger : the epic life of Frank Hamer, the man who killed Bonnie and Clyde by John Boessenecker
Call Number: BIO HAMER FRA B (Adult biography)
ISBN: 9781250131591
Publication Date: 2017-07-03
From the horseback days of the Old West through the gangster days of the 1930s, Hamer stood on the frontlines of some of the most important and exciting periods in American history. He participated in the Bandit War of 1915, battled the Mexican Revolution's spillover across the border, protected African Americans from lynch mobs and the Ku Klux Klan, and ran down gangsters, bootleggers, and Communists. But popular media have labeled Hamer as the "villain" of the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde. Boessenecker sets out to restore Hamer's good name, and tells the full story of this near-mythic lawman.

WINNER

Frank Little and the IWW: the blood that stained an American family by Jane Little Botkin

FINALISTS:

Tom Jeffords, Friend of Cochise by Doug Hocking
Tejano Tiger: José de los Santos Benavides and the Texas-Mexico Borderlands, 1823-1891 by Jerry Thompson

WINNER

White Hat: the military career of Captain William Philo Clark by Mark J. Nelson

FINALISTS:

Polly Pry: the woman who wrote the West by Julia Bricklin
The Cowboy President: the American West and the making of Theodore Roosevelt by Michael F. Blake

2000s

Knight Without Armor : Carlos Eduardo Castañeda, 1896-1958 by Felix D. Almaraz
Call Number: BIO CASTA CARE A (Adult biography)
ISBN: 9780890968901
Publication Date: 1999-11-01
A biography of twentieth-century Hispanic historian Carlos Castaneda, discussing his humble origins, his work on behalf of the poor, his rise to prominence in the field of education, and his prolific publishing career.

Sam Houston by James L. Haley
Call Number: BIO HOUST SAM H (Adult biography)
ISBN: 9780806136448
Publication Date: 2004-08-30
In the decades preceding the Civil War, few figures in the United States were as influential or as controversial as Sam Houston. The author explores Houston's momentous career and the complex man behind it. Haley's fifteen years of research and writing have produced possibly the most complete, most personal, and most readable Sam Houston biography ever written.

WINNER

Galt: Lakota War Chief by Robert W. Larson

WINNER

Frontiersman: Daniel Boone and the making of America by Meredith Mason Brown

FINALISTS:

A Passion for Nature: the life of John Muir by Donald Worster
Horses That Buck: the story of champion bronc rider Bill Smith by Margot Kahn

Frontiersman : Daniel Boone and the making of America (Southern biography) by Meredith Mason Brown
Call Number: BIO BOONE DAN B (Adult biography)
ISBN: 9780807154458
Publication Date: 2013-08-12
Supported with copious maps, illustrations, endnotes, and a detailed chronology of Boone's life, Frontiersman provides a fresh and accurate rendering of a man most people know only as a folk hero--and of the nation that has mythologized him for over two centuries.

Spur Awards

2020s

WINNER

Nighthawk Rising: a biography of accused cattle rustler Queen Ann Bassett of Brown's Park by Diana Allen Kouris

FINALISTS:

Washington Territory's Grand Lady the story of Matilda (GLover) Koontz Jackson by Julie McDonald Zander

Political Hell-Raiser: the life and times of Senator Burton K. Wheeler of Montana by Marc C. Johnson

WINNER

Tecumseh and the Prophet by Peter Cozzens

FINALISTS:

An Honest Enemy by Paul Magid

Race and the Wild West by Laura J. Arata

WINNER

The Forgotten Botanist: Sara Plummer Lemmon's Life of Science and Art by Wynne Brown

FINALISTS:

Cockeyed Happy: Ernest Hemingway's Wyoming summers with Pauline by Darla Worden

Jim Bridger: trailblazer of the American West by Jerry Enzler

WINNER: Before Billy the Kid : the Boy Behind the Legendary Outlaw by Melody Graves

FINALISTS:

Country Never Trod : William Lewis Manly's 1849 Voyage Down Utah's Green River by Michael D. Kane

King Fisher : the Short Life and Elusive Legend of a Texas Desperado by Chuck Parsons and Thomas C, Bicknell

Raphael Pumpelly's Arizona : the Frontier Adventures of a Young Mining Engineer by C. Gilbert Storms

WINNER: Sacajawea : Mystery, Myth, and Legend by Candy Moulton

FINALISTS

Oracle of Lost Causes : John Newman Edwards and His Never-Ending Civil War by Matthew Christopher Hulbert

Unrepentant Dakota Woman : Angelique Renville and the Struggle for Indigenous Identity, 1845-1876 by Linda M. Clemmons

2010s

WINNER

Peg Leg by David C. Humphrey

FINALISTS:

As Big as the West: the pioneer life of Granville Stuart by Clyde Miller & Carol O'Connor

Mormon Convert/Mormon Defector: a Scottish immigrant in the American West by Polly Aird

WINNER

Wolf: the lives of Jack London by James Haley

FINALISTS:

Wild Horse Annie and the Last of the Mustangs by David Cruise & Allison Griffiths

Bandido: the life and times of Tiburcio Vasquez by John Boessenecker

WINNER

George Crook by Paul Magid

FINALISTS:

Ned Wynkoop and the Lonely Road from Sand Creek by Louis Kraft

Will Rogers: a political life by Richard D. White

WINNER

Geronimo by Robert M. Utley

FINALISTS:

Ho! For the Black Hills: Captain Jack Crawford reports the Black Hills gold rush and the Great Sioux War by Paul L. Hedren

"That Fiend in Hell": Soapy Smith in legend by Catherine Holder Spude

WINNER

Jack London: an American life by Earle Labor

FINALISTS:

Cowboy Stuntman: from Olympic gold to the silver screen by Dean Smith with Mike Cox

In the Shadow of Billy the Kid: Susan McSween and the Lincoln County War by Kathleen P. Chamberlain

WINNER

Son of Dewey Beard: last survivor of the Little Bighorn by Philp Burnham

FINALISTS:

Tom Horn in Life and Legend by Larry D. Ball

The Life and Legends of Calamity Jane by Richard W. Etulain

WINNER

Custer's Trials: a life on the frontier of a New America by T. J. Stiles

FINALISTS:

The Gray Fox: George Crook and the Indian Wars by Paul Magid

Juan Bautista De Anza: the King's governor in New Mexico by Carlos R. Herrera

WINNER

Black Elk: the life of an American visionary by Joe Jackson

FINALISTS:

Texas Ranger: the epic life of Frank Hamer, the man who killed Bonnie and Clyde by John Boessenecker

Nobody Rich or Famous: a family memoir by Richard Shelton

WINNER

Frank Little and the IWW: the blood that stained an American family by Jane Little Botkin

FINALISTS:

Tom Jeffords, Friend of Cochise by Doug Hocking

Tejano Tiger: José de los Santos Benavides and the Texas-Mexico Borderlands, 1823-1891 by Jerry Thompson

WINNER

White Hat: the military career of Captain William Philo Clark by Mark J. Nelson

FINALISTS:

Polly Pry: the woman who wrote the West by Julia Bricklin

The Cowboy President: the American West and the making of Theodore Roosevelt by Michael F. Blake

2000s

WINNER

Galt: Lakota War Chief by Robert W. Larson