Lash up your snowshoes, my fellow Frontier Partisans. This next podcast series is going to take us down a long trail in an operation that is going to last all winter. It started with an impulse to track the trail of Benjamin Church, who is often billed as “America’s First Ranger,” because of the way he conducted operations with native forces to … [Read more...] about Rangers & Raiders

Fellow Frontier Partisan Chas Clifton has posted on the passing of Thomas McIntyre. McIntyre was an exceptional outdoor writer, hunting writer... hell, just a fine writer, period. I was gobsmacked when he started corresponding with me through Frontier Partisans, and even more astonished and delighted when he honored me with a request for a blurb … [Read more...] about Thunder…

By Matthew Ilseman It is my habit to read horror fiction around Halloween. I would not be surprised if a lot of people did this. It tends to get one in the mood for the holiday. I don’t inundate myself with it because I can burn out reading too much of one thing, but I definitely make a point of it around time this year. I chose two of the … [Read more...] about ‘Shadow on the Sun’

“Damn peculiar things going on along this coast. But that’s always the way when civilized men come into the wilderness. They’re all crazy as hell.” — Conan of Cimmeria * “What I want is impossible, as I’ve told you before; I want, in a word, the frontier — which is compassed in the phrase new land, open land, free land, swarming with game … [Read more...] about Encountering The Black Stranger

I can resist anything but temptation. It is known. So, when Paulina Springs Books has a copy of Pekka Hämäläinen’s hot-off-the-presses new book in stock and offers to put my name on it, well... There go my Wednesday plans. I was going to hit the woods for a few hours, then work on the script for the podcast on the slaying of Sheriff James R. … [Read more...] about Indigenous Continent

It’s getting weird out there, amigos...Synchronicity strikes often in these parts, and it’s usually a cool thing. Gotta wonder what’s up though when you keep cutting the sign of a family of serial killers on the American frontier. Must be the spooky season. First, I get wind of a new novel by a Norwegian tale-spinner of the uncanny. A sinister … [Read more...] about A Bender Bender And An Alternative Butch & Sundance?

There’s a new Sidetrails Podcast up on the Patreon page — in which I ponder why the lore of created worlds like Middle Earth or Westeros is so compelling to so many, while actual history doesn't seem to have nearly the same kind of popular culture throw-weight. You have to be a patron to access it. Support through Patreon helps pay the bills … [Read more...] about Fantasy, History & Fantasy History

The U.S.-Mexico borderlands was “the Wild West” well into the 20th Century. You could argue that, in some places, it still is. This is one of the most fascinating times and places in all of Frontier Partisan history — which means I’ll be jumping on Samuel K. Dolan’s new one as soon as Paulina Springs can smuggle it out to me. Supposed to be … [Read more...] about The Line Riders

  *****************   One has to assume that a biography of the mad, bad and dangerous to know Peter Beard will be a helluva good read. His book, The End of the Game, is of huge importance to me. He was a friend of Karen Blixen, took the classic photograph of the weather-beaten face of a trail-worn J.A. Hunter, and chronicled the end … [Read more...] about Working The Trapline — Call Of The Wild

The war on the Nueces Strip in Texas in the 1870s is one of the epic episodes of irregular warfare in the annals of Frontier Partisan history. It pitted a special force of Texas Rangers against bandits and outlaws of all stripes — including an organized rustling racket operated by the borderland warlord Juan Cortina. The Special Force was led by … [Read more...] about Follow Me To Hell