Book description
Jack Crawford (1847-1917) entertained a generation of Americans and
introduced them to their frontier heritage. A master storyteller who
presented the West as he experienced it, he was one of America's most
popular performers in the late nineteenth century.
Dressed in buckskin with a wide-brimmed sombrero covering his flowing
locks, Crawford delivered a “frontier monologue and medley” that, as
one New York City journalist reported, “held his audience spell-bound
for two hours by a simple narration of his life.”
In this biography, Darlis Miller re-creates his experiences as a
scout, rancher, miner, reformer, husband and father, and poet and
entertainer to reinterpret the American Dream and the lure of getting
rich pursued by many during the Gilded Age.
Darlis A. Miller is professor emerita of history at New Mexico State
University, Las Cruces.
