Hershel House, one of the preeminent builders of American Long Rifles and knives of the Long Hunter era, has died. He was a giant in the traditional field, and by all accounts a fine man. He was 82 years old and had a fine run, but his passing has left a hole in the world for many people.
Mel Hankla wrote a really fine piece on House for Muzzleloader Magazine years ago. Read it here.
Hershel Carmen House was born July 4, 1941 and needs no introduction to these pages. His work has been nationally known for the better part of four decades. Hershel and his younger brothers Frank and John are the progenitors of what is known as the “Woodbury School” in today’s contemporary longrifle society. Named for the small Kentucky town on the banks of the Green River in which they grew up. Products made by this family ingenuously express their personalities, exhibit varied artistic talents, and reveal a genuine way of life that has significantly influenced many aspects and countless members of today’s contemporary longrifle culture.
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Monk scouted up a novel to be released later this year titled Dark Frontier.
A thrilling historical western set in 1890s Oregon, from the author of the critically acclaimed Bernicia Chronicles. An English soldier turned policeman escapes to the American West for a new future, but life on the frontier proves far harder than he ever imagined…
A man can flee from everything but his own nature.
1890. Lieutenant Gabriel Stokes of the British Army left behind the horrors of war in Afghanistan for a role in the Metropolitan Police. Though he rose quickly through the ranks, the squalid violence of London’s East End proved just as dark and oppressive as the battlefield.
With his life falling apart, and longing for peace and meaning, Gabriel leaves the grime of London behind and heads for the wilderness and wide open spaces of the American West.
He soon realises that the wilds of Oregon are far from the idyll he has yearned for. The Blue Mountains may be beautiful, but with the frontier a complex patchwork of feuds and felonies, and ranchers as vicious as any back alley cut-throat in London, Gabriel finds himself unable to escape his past and the demons that drive him. Can he find a place for himself on the far edge of the New World?
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I just discovered that the pulpy goodness that is Warrior had a third season in 2023. Lady Marilyn and I will need to catch up on that…
Set during the Tong Wars in late 1870s San Francisco, the series follows Ah Sahm, a martial arts prodigy who emigrates from China in search of his sister, only to be sold to one of the most powerful tongs in Chinatown.
Warrior came out of an old pitch by Bruce Lee and one of the men at the helm is Jonathan Tropper, who created Banshee (the Irish pub in Warrior is named The Banshee. Nice meta touch there.) We enjoyed the first two seasons on Cinemax, but the show got derailed by COVID and the demise of Cinemax original programing. HBO Max picked it up and delivered a third season last summer. That may be it, although I hear there’s a possibility of Netflix picking it up…
Warrior is pure pulp, but it is exploring a real, international frontier phenomenon.
I ran across a book in the library that takes on The Chinese Question across multiple 19th century frontiers.
How Chinese migration to the world’s goldfields upended global power and economics and forged modern conceptions of race.
In roughly five decades, between 1848 and 1899, more gold was removed from the earth than had been mined in the 3,000 preceding years, bringing untold wealth to individuals and nations. But friction between Chinese and white settlers on the goldfields of California, Australia, and South Africa catalyzed a global battle over “the Chinese Question”: would the United States and the British Empire outlaw Chinese immigration?
This distinguished history of the Chinese diaspora and global capitalism chronicles how a feverish alchemy of race and money brought Chinese people to the West and reshaped the nineteenth-century world. Drawing on ten years of research across five continents, prize-winning historian Mae Ngai narrates the story of the thousands of Chinese who left their homeland in pursuit of gold, and how they formed communities and organizations to help navigate their perilous new world. Out of their encounters with whites, and the emigrants’ assertion of autonomy and humanity, arose the pernicious western myth of the “coolie” laborer, a racist stereotype used to drive anti-Chinese sentiment.
By the turn of the twentieth century, the United States and the British Empire had answered “the Chinese Question” with laws that excluded Chinese people from immigration and citizenship. Ngai explains how this happened and argues that Chinese exclusion was not extraneous to the emergent global economy but an integral part of it.
This is outside my reading scope for The Ranger Project, etc., but I will mark it down for future exploration. The Chinese story is an important one, and it ain’t pretty. Oregon was the site of a terrible crime involving the massacre of some 34 Chinese gold miners in 1887.
Matthew says
How is the Ranger Project going?
JimC says
Lots of reading.
Quixotic Mainer says
Horace Bell had a great tale of a close range confrontation with a gang of Chinese bank robbers who had hand dug tunnel underneath the streets of LA. He got clobbered with a crowbar, but managed to get his Navy Colt in play enough to wound and subdue his man, then drag him back out the powder filled tunnel.
Robert Duval’s Broken Trail movie deal with the godawful part of the Asian immigrant experience pretty frankly too.
Ugly Hombre says
Have not seen the “Warrior” show yet have to check it out- too bad Bruce was not able to bring it to life he would have killed it.. The show looks like fun.
Lee had connections with the old school Shaw brothers movie company he would have brought some of the old Hong Kong actors in with the traditional kung fu skills- maybe combined it with western gunplay- Wowser! Might have ran for years.
San Francisco China Town is (or at least it was) a great place. I had friends from Manila that moved there. Used to visit fairly often back in the 90’s. Eat great Chinese food, visited some of the K.F. gyms that they had connections to. Go behind the front walls, to the interior of the building store fronts visit Tao/Buddhist Temples inside etc. Really interesting.
China Town was very safe if you were a visitor, a tourist spending money etc. the benevolent Tongs had watchers on the corners. If you did street crime in there it would not end well for you. Fun to talk to them. “What are you doing?” “Visit the Tiger-Crane Sifu on Clay street.” “ah cool”.
I was sad to see outsider street crime in China towns is pretty bad now in New York and California wondered what happened? Attacking old people and women shocked me. Tong’s were given a stipend by the community to police and protect the streets-it was effective seemed to work.
There are some web sites and blogs about crime by locals now on the web. It’s not good.
Wonder what happened?
That type of evil would not have stood in the old days. The outside thugs would have go off easy if they only got a free K.F. lesson- so to speak.. lol
John Maddox Roberts says
Someone is missing a bet. There needs to be a series about the real-life Honolulu detective Chang Apana, who was hell on criminals in the late 19th-early 20th centuries. He was the inspiration for Charlie Chan, but he was not the roly-poly, Confucius-spouting figure of the movies who never got his hands bloodied. He was a scrawny little guy and his favorite weapon was a bullwhip. Badass as they come. And Honolulu was not the idyllic tourist haven we know now. It was a tough soldier’s and sailor’s town more noted for bar fights than for surfers.
JimC says
Oh HELL yes!
Ugly Hombre says
https://homerlea.org/wp-content/uploads/Webpage-Main-Photo-Homer-Lea-768×1036.jpg
https://www.historynet.com/soldier-of-misfortune/
Lots of great material for Chinese American themed movies and TV if Hollywood would wake up get off the “Woke” idiot train and stop making remakes.
“I have come to help you save China from the old tigress,” Lea replied.
“You are too young for that,” Kang told Lea.
“I am the same age as Napoleon was at Rivoli,” Lea replied.”
Homer Lea’s story would be one of the best- he was a benevolent triad member- and ran military institutes in China Towns all aver the U.S. east and west to train young Chinese men to go back to China to help the reformers defeat the Ching dynasty hard liners and modernize China.
https://homerlea.org/
“Homer Lea’s career was stranger than many found in romantic fiction. Lea (1876-1912), a five-foot hunchback who suffered from debilitating health, overcame his afflictions in pursuing dreams and ambitions that few men ever achieve. He is best remembered as a somewhat mysterious adventurer, author, and geopolitical strategist who challenged conventional wisdom and went against significant odds in forging himself a role on the world scene. His youthful desires for adventure, including the pursuit of a military career, were fulfilled when he found opportunities for advancement through the Chinese reform and revolutionary movements. He began his adventures in 1900, after dropping out of Stanford University and going to China during the Boxer Rebellion, and ultimately became the trusted personal military advisor to Chinese revolutionary leader Dr. Sun Yat-sen during the 1911 Chinese Republican Revolution”
Truth stranger than fiction for sure.
JimC says
I believe that Frederick Russell Burnham wrote an essay on Lea in Taking Chances.
Matthew says
That is one weird story.
Ugly Hombre says
https://www.c-span.org/video/?296486-1/homer-lea-american-soldier-fortune
Its a helluva story! Wonder what happened to General Lea’s dragon sword?
Ugly Hombre says
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/65/Homer_lea_grave.jpg/540px-Homer_lea_grave.jpg
Did not know that- will look for it. I have some of his {Lea”s) books- really interesting turn of the century “Real Politico” reading. Quite a man to overcome all his health issues and do what he did. I have a copy of his “Vermillion Pencil” novel a scorcher for its day- did not sell well though about a Christian Priest on the run from the Ching iirc- have to dig it out. If the Ching caught you it was no bueno in spades- better off dead.
https://bolerium.cdn.bibliopolis.com/pictures/280424_3.jpg?v=1646266099
If you have not seen it? You might like the book “Double Ten” about the covert activities of the protect The Emperor” Tong in the U.S. A great read about Homer his Chinese mentors and his crew of American Merc’s. It would have make a super movie back in the day. Features a Cowboy trained Chinese hit man who uses a Lugar etc. The author was Homers second of command of the L.A. reform army military institute. A Philippine war vet- Ansel O’Banion.
I have a lot of respect for Homer Lea- A tough as nails man small in stature with giant stones.
If I ever make it back to Taipei, I’ll try to put up some smoke at his tomb.