Most gunfights in the Old West were over in a matter of seconds. Today, we hear about a gunfight that lasted more than 30 hours. It involved dozens of bad guys firing thousands of rounds at a single lawman. Commentator Katie Keckeisen has the story of that lawman who spent his childhood in Topeka and later became a Mexican-American folk hero.
(Transcript)
Elfego Baca: the Myth, the Legend, the Folk Hero
By Katie Keckeisen
Kansas has been called home by many of the American West’s most famous gunslingers. But while many of us know the tales of Wyatt Earp and Wild Bill Hickok, one Kansas-raised lawman is less well-known. This is the story of Elfego Baca, one of the first Mexican American folk heroes of the old West.
Elfego Baca was born in 1865 in Socorro, New Mexico. Only a year or two after he was born, the Baca family moved to Topeka, hoping to find new and better opportunities in the face of the economic downturn that followed the Civil War. They settled into a house in the 500 block of southeast Quincy St. and, for a time, it seemed as if everything was looking up. But in 1872, tragedy struck with Elfego’s mother and three of his siblings died from an unidentified illness and were buried in Topeka Cemetery. In 1880, Elfego and his father returned to Socorro.
As he grew up, Elfego Baca started to acquire a reputation as a lawman. Baca described himself “self-made deputy” and would flash a homemade badge at anyone causing trouble in Socorro. “If they didn’t believe I was a deputy,” he later said, “they’d better believe it, because I made ‘em believe it.”
In 1874, Baca was nineteen years old and visiting Frisco, New Mexico. While there, he caught sight of a drunk cowboy named Charlie McCarty who was firing his gun into the air and into random buildings. McCarty was known to belong to a group of Texas cowboys who had been terrorizing the Hispanic population in Frisco.
When the group heard of McCarty’s arrest, several of them decided to ride into Frisco to find Baca and make an example of him. Baca put up a fight, which ended with two of the Texans dead and one injured. Baca holed up inside an old adobe jail and was soon surrounded. In some versions, Baca found himself against 40 Texas cowboys. Baca himself would later recall it was 80. No matter what the true number, Baca was almost certainly outnumbered and outgunned.
Over the next 33 hours, the angry mob of cowboys riddled the jail with an estimated 4,000 rounds. But Baca emerged alive and uninjured. He eventually surrendered himself to the Justice of the Peace, but was acquitted of murder after the bullet ridden door of the jail was entered into evidence.
The Frisco Shootout, as it came to be known, cemented Baca’s place as a folk hero to the Hispanic population of the Southwest. Baca used his fame to become a well-known politician and attorney, who acted as the American representative for both Pancho Villa and Jose Ynez Salazar. Every few years, Baca made his way back to Topeka to visit the graves of his mother and siblings.
Elfego Baca died of natural causes at the age of 80. Thirteen years later, the Walt Disney Company aired a miniseries called The Nine Lives of Elfego Baca. This made Baca the first Hispanic pop culture hero in the United States. And while liberty was most certainly taken with the story, as the old saying goes, when the legend becomes fact, print the legend. Baca would have certainly approved. ###
Commentator Katie Keckeisen is a local history librarian for the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library. She lives in Topeka.