American Frontiersman

ABOUT THE ISSUE: If you love the American frontier and the Old West, you’ll also love Tom Simonton, the man who created this issue’s cover art. A modern-day mountain man living in rural Oklahoma, Simonton is a painter extraordinaire and he has devoted much of his life to putting oil on canvas to depict frontiersmen, cowboys and other figures of the era. Spending time as a child on his great-grandfather’s cattle ranch helped start Tom’s journey, which has led to being featured at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. You’ve already glimpsed some of Tom’s art on the cover. Don’t miss seeing even more, along with the story of his life and art, starting on page 8. While some people paint the American frontier, others live it. And author Donald Wade Davis…

“The Indian War event at Fort Larned is a go—all we have to do is maintain social distance,” I texted my three buddies. After a 2020 reenacting season that was simply nonexistent, it was exciting to have a real, live event to go to, and we immediately began to make plans for the Memorial Day weekend event at Fort Larned in central Kansas. Fort Larned was known as the Guardian of the Santa Fe Trail, and as such would present a good venue for the frontier portrayals we were all contemplating. As a part of that planning, we began to send pictures of our impressions to each other. My good friend Todd from South Dakota texted me a picture of his outfit as a scout for the 1868 time frame for the…

Just like many American Frontiersman readers, Tom Simonton should have been born a century earlier. For him, growing up in the 1860s would likely have been much more enjoyable than doing so in the 1960s. A mountain man and cowboy at heart, the accomplished frontier and Western artist lives out in the sticks near the small town of Minco, Oklahoma, in a house he built with his own hands and warms by cutting his own firewood. “I’ve always been associated with that,” Simonton said. “I love the great outdoors. If I’m not in the great outdoors, I’m unhappy. Where I live, I’m a backwoods guy.” Tom has had a fascination with the frontier, the American West and Native American culture for as long as he can remember. Much time spent on his great-grandparents’…

“ In the decades ahead, Lambert’s photographs may be the main means to distinguish which objects are orignal antiques and which are contemporary art. ” If there is a single identifying characteristic of American longrifles, it is this: They are long. Long like a ’59 Cadillac or a fashion model’s legs. However, sometimes they weren’t. At the Contemporary Longrifle Association (CLA) annual meeting and show last year, where hundreds of the best artists working to authentically create period-type guns, horns, tomahawks, bags and all the other trappings of early American material culture bring their very best work, a miniature longrifle stood out from the crowd. In my 10 years of attending these shows, I’d never seen one before. I needed to know more. The mini-rifle’s creator, master gunsmith Mike Miller, was happy…

“In His Prime” By David Wright Everything we know about John Colter, said to be the first mountain man, comes to us from the works of writers and historians—some reliable, others speculating. On today’s internet, I counted 11 books about Colter, then stopped counting, turning to Hollywood instead. The movies include three major features about Colter’s Run and have touched on the subject in three or four others and planned for some that were never made. Three men actually talked to Colter about his run and wrote stories describing what he told them. Dr. William H. Thomas penned a brief 264-word story published in the Missouri Gazette on July 13, 1810. Thomas James shared a trapping expedition with Colter in 1810 and penned a much longer Colter story. It’s possible that James’ story…

HOLLYWOOD’S FASCINATION with John Colter’s run had an early start: the 1912 silent film, John Colter’s Escape. In the modern era, the original script for Cornel Wilde’s 1965 movie The Naked Prey was largely based on Colter’s escape from the Blackfeet. But in the magic of filmmaking, Colter’s Run was placed in Africa and was photographed there. Since then, films such as Run of the Arrow (1957) and The Mountain Men (1980) have incidents bringing Colter to mind. As does Across the Wide Missouri (1951), when Clark Gable tells his captors he can’t run. An epic version of Colter’s Run was planned in 2006 and was the subject of an article in Casting News, January 26, 2006, after a previous article in Variety. Carroll Ballard (Never Cry Wolf, The Black Stallion…