Frontier Partisans

A Crow hunter whose poaching case went to the U.S. Supreme Court was vindicated in a decision on Monday, May 20, that upholds his people’s right to hunt off-reservation and off-season based on 1868 treaty rights. Neil Gorsuch has proven to be a staunch supporter of native treaty rights, having previously affirmed rights under the 1855 treaty … [Read more...] about Supreme Court Vindicates Crow Hunter

    I was born by a river But it was paved with cement I was born by a river But it was paved with cement Still I’d stand in that dry river And dream that I was soaking wet — Dave Alvin, “Dry River” * Drivin’ down your freeway Midnight alleys roam Cops in cars The topless bars Never saw a woman so alone, so alone So … [Read more...] about Ghosts of LA

In the last post on The Cowboy Iliad, I noted that the soundtracks for Walter Hill’s films The Long Riders and Geronimo: An American Legend were composed by Ry Cooder — and I thought I oughta give that master of Americana a tip o’ the hat. In one of those flashes of synchronicity that seem to occur rather frequently here at Frontier Partisans, I … [Read more...] about A Tip O’ The Hat To Ry Cooder

“The Cowboy Iliad reaches back to the spoken tradition of storytelling — designed to have no simple resolution, but a mix of history, nostalgia and speculation. And, of course, we wanted to honor the tradition of the Western… In other words, Bobby Woods and I had a couple of shooters and made a record.”  - Walter Hill During the summer between … [Read more...] about ‘The Cowboy Iliad’

I am watching the second season of the outstanding Israeli drama Fauda. The intense military thriller was co-created by a former Israeli special operations soldier named Lior Raz, who also stars as shit-magnet Doron Kavillio. The series draws on Raz’s experiences with a special counter-terrorism unit that conducts undercover operations in the … [Read more...] about ‘Desperate Souls Behaving Most Desperately’ — Meditations On A Blood Feud

I first encountered the dreaded Wound Ballistics Crank in the wild when I worked at Pachmayr in Pasadena, California, back in the early 1990s. This is the guy (the species is entirely male and it’s anybody’s guess how they reproduce in such profusion) who wants to discuss ad nauseum the performance of different calibers and bullets in the flesh of … [Read more...] about Little Cree, Big Bear

The Mexican Revolution featured as vivid a cast of characters as could be found in any drama — the mercurial Centaur of the North, Pancho Villa; the devoted and deadly peasant caballero Emiliano Zapata; the brilliant military technician Alvaro Obregon; the bizarre narcissist Venustiano Carranza; the homicidal Rodolfo Fierro... Maximo Castillo is … [Read more...] about Maximo!

Sublime. Trailer for Deadwood, featuring Colter Wall’s Blacktop. There are many things wrong in this ol’ world. This ain’t one of ’em. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXq--aCUKZA * Frank Bill has launched Frank Bill’s House of Grit Podcast. I suspect I’ll be a regular listener on those Tuesday nights in the  Nugget van. Bill is the author of … [Read more...] about Working The Trapline — May 2019

The mysterious magical algorithm kicked up another video game soundtrack that I really like — moody, atmospheric; good writing background. It comes from a new game called Days Gone. As you know, I don’t play (no, not even Red Dead Redemption). Nevertheless, I find it fascinating how the gaming world recasts frontier stories into settings that … [Read more...] about Freakers In Oregon

I’ve spent some time recently in the company of the Revolutionary War Seneca war leader Cornplanter. The son of a Dutch trader and a Seneca woman, Cornplanter was a highly effective partisan in the savage fighting in the Mohawk Valley of New York during the American Revolution. After the war, he resigned himself — and led his people — to … [Read more...] about Repatriating A Tomahawk