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Category: War
The Lincoln County War wasn’t a war in any traditional sense. It was a vicious, drawn-out power struggle in southeastern New Mexico Territory that ran from 1878 to 1881, driven by greed, political corruption, and personal vendettas. It turned ranchers into gunmen, merchants into targets, and a teenage drifter named Henry McCarty into the legend we know as Billy the Kid.
More people have heard of Billy than have heard of the actual causes of the conflict, which is a shame. The Lincoln County War is one of the best examples of how the Old West actually worked — and how it fell apart. The firearms these men carried shaped every ambush, every last stand, and every street fight from Lincoln to Blazer’s Mills.
The House: Murphy, Dolan, and the Root Cause
To understand the Lincoln County War, you have to understand The House. Lawrence G. Murphy and James J. Dolan, both Irish immigrants, operated a general store in Lincoln known locally as “The House.” It wasn’t just a store — it was the economic and political engine of Lincoln County.
Murphy and Dolan controlled the lucrative government beef contracts that supplied Fort Stanton and the Mescalero Apache reservation. They extended credit to local ranchers at punishing terms. They had the county sheriff, William Brady, firmly in their pocket. As a result, if you wanted to do business in Lincoln County, you went through The House, or you didn’t do business at all.
Murphy was the senior partner, but by the mid-1870s his health was failing — he was drinking heavily and suffering from what was likely cancer. Dolan, younger and more aggressive, was increasingly running the operation. Their methods were simple: political patronage, economic coercion, and when necessary, violence. It was a system that worked as long as nobody challenged it.
The Challengers: Tunstall, McSween, and Chisum
The challenge came from three very different men. John Henry Tunstall was a 24-year-old Englishman from London who’d come to New Mexico Territory with his family’s money and ambitions of building a cattle empire. Alexander McSween was a Canadian-born lawyer who’d initially done legal work for The House but had broken with Murphy and Dolan over a financial dispute. Meanwhile, John Chisum was the biggest cattle rancher in the region, running tens of thousands of head across a territory the size of some eastern states.
In 1877, Tunstall opened a competing general store in Lincoln and, together with McSween, established a bank. This was a direct challenge to The House’s monopoly. Dolan and Murphy responded with legal harassment, filing lawsuits and getting court orders to seize Tunstall’s property.
Tunstall, for his part, wasn’t particularly diplomatic about the situation. He openly announced his intention to break The House’s grip on Lincoln County commerce. Poking that particular bear was going to have consequences.
The Murder That Started It All
On February 18, 1878, a posse led by William Morton — operating under a court order to seize Tunstall’s cattle and horses — caught up with Tunstall on the road to Lincoln. Tunstall was riding with several of his ranch hands, including Billy the Kid, Dick Brewer, John Middleton, and Fred Waite. As the posse approached, the ranch hands scattered into the hills. Tunstall, apparently believing he could resolve the situation peacefully, stayed on the road.
He was wrong. Members of the posse — including Morton, Jesse Evans, and Tom Hill — shot Tunstall dead. He was struck by two rifle bullets, one in the chest and one in the head. The posse then shot Tunstall’s horse and placed the dead man’s hat under the horse’s head, apparently as a gesture of contempt. A federal investigator, Frank Warner Angel, later determined that Tunstall had been murdered in cold blood.
Tunstall’s murder lit the fuse. His cowhands and supporters, including Billy the Kid, formed a vigilante group called the Regulators, with Dick Brewer as their leader. They obtained deputizations from a sympathetic justice of the peace and set out to arrest Tunstall’s killers — though “arrest” was an optimistic term for what they had in mind.
The Regulators Strike Back
On March 6, 1878, the Regulators captured William Morton and Frank Baker, two men identified as participants in Tunstall’s murder. Both prisoners were killed while allegedly “attempting to escape” on March 9. Additionally, a Regulator named William McCloskey, suspected of being a Dolan spy, was also killed during the incident.
On April 1, 1878, the Regulators ambushed Sheriff William Brady and his deputies on the main street of Lincoln, firing from behind an adobe wall next to Tunstall’s store. Brady was hit by at least a dozen rounds and died in the street. Deputy George Hindman was also mortally wounded. Billy the Kid was later charged with Brady’s murder — one of the few legal consequences anyone faced during the entire Lincoln County War.
Three days later, on April 4, the Regulators killed Andrew “Buckshot” Roberts at Blazer’s Mills in a close-range gunfight that also cost Dick Brewer his life. Roberts, despite being gut-shot in the opening volley, barricaded himself in a building and fought for hours with a Springfield rifle, killing Brewer with a shot to the head. It was one of the most remarkable last stands in frontier history — a dying man who refused to quit.
Washington Intervenes
The bloodshed in Lincoln County eventually got Washington’s attention. The British government filed a formal complaint over Tunstall’s murder — he was, after all, a British subject killed under questionable legal authority. In response, President Rutherford B. Hayes dispatched a special investigator, Frank Warner Angel, whose report documented a pattern of corruption, murder, and abuse of legal process by the Dolan-Murphy faction.
In September 1878, territorial governor Samuel Axtell was replaced by Lew Wallace — yes, the same Lew Wallace who wrote Ben-Hur. Wallace arrived with instructions to restore order. He issued an amnesty proclamation and even met secretly with Billy the Kid in March 1879, reportedly offering the Kid a pardon in exchange for testimony against Dolan’s allies in the murder of Huston Chapman, a one-armed lawyer who’d been gunned down on the streets of Lincoln.
Billy held up his end and testified before a grand jury, but the pardon never materialized. Wallace had a novel to finish and a territory to govern, and keeping promises to a teenage outlaw apparently ranked low on his list.
The Five-Day Battle of Lincoln
The Lincoln County War reached its climax in the Five-Day Battle of Lincoln, fought from July 15 to July 19, 1878. Alexander McSween returned to Lincoln with approximately 41 supporters. He positioned about ten men in his own home and distributed the rest throughout the town, including at the Ellis store. Opposing them were Dolan’s forces, reinforced by a contingent of Seven Rivers cowboys and backed by Sheriff George Peppin.
For four days, the two sides exchanged fire across the town of Lincoln. Neither side could dislodge the other. Then, on the night of July 18-19, Dolan’s men set the McSween house on fire. As the flames spread room by room, the trapped Regulators had no choice but to attempt a breakout.
McSween tried to surrender. He was shot nine times and killed. At least four other Regulators died in the escape attempt. Bob Beckwith, a Dolan supporter, was also killed in the chaos — reportedly hit by friendly fire, though accounts vary. However, Billy the Kid and several other Regulators managed to slip through the Dolan lines in the darkness and escape into the hills.
The Five-Day Battle effectively ended the organized phase of the Lincoln County War, though the violence continued to sputter for years afterward. Billy the Kid continued his career of cattle rustling and gunfighting until Pat Garrett shot him dead at Fort Sumner on July 14, 1881. Lawrence Murphy died of cancer on October 20, 1878, just months after the battle. James Dolan was eventually indicted for Tunstall’s murder but acquitted; he later acquired Tunstall’s property and died on his ranch in 1898.
The Guns of the Lincoln County War
The firearms carried during the Lincoln County War were the standard arms of the late 1870s frontier. Understanding what these men carried helps explain how the fighting unfolded — and why certain engagements played out the way they did.
Colt Single Action Army
The Colt Single Action Army — introduced in 1873 and chambered most commonly in .45 Colt — was the dominant revolver on the New Mexico frontier. By 1878, the Peacemaker (as it came to be known) was available from Colt in multiple barrel lengths, from the short-barreled “Sheriff’s Model” to the standard 7.5-inch cavalry length.
In 1878, Colt began offering the Single Action Army in .44-40 Winchester as the “Frontier Six-Shooter,” which allowed a man to carry one caliber of ammunition for both his revolver and his rifle. On a frontier where resupply was uncertain, that mattered enormously.
Winchester Model 1873
The Winchester Model 1873 was the lever-action rifle of the era. Chambered in .44-40 Winchester (and later .38-40 and .32-20), it was a fast-handling repeater that could be fed through a loading gate on the right side of the receiver. It held up to 15 rounds in its tubular magazine in the full-length rifle configuration. For more on Winchester’s history and how they dominated the frontier market, see our detailed company profile.
For men fighting at the ranges typical of Lincoln County — across a street, across a corral, from behind an adobe wall — the Winchester ’73 was an ideal weapon. It wasn’t a long-range precision arm, but in a close-quarters gunfight in a frontier town, rate of fire mattered more than ballistic performance at distance. Compare that to the broader role lever-action rifles played across the entire American West.
Colt Model 1877 “Thunderer” — Billy the Kid’s Sidearm
The Colt Model 1877 “Thunderer” deserves special mention because it was Billy the Kid’s known sidearm. The 1877 was Colt’s first double-action revolver. The “Thunderer” variant was chambered in .41 Long Colt, while the “Lightning” was in .38 Long Colt.
When Pat Garrett killed Billy the Kid at Fort Sumner in 1881, the outlaw’s pistol was examined and described as “a self-cocker, calibre .41” with “five cartridges and one shell in the chambers.” That’s a Thunderer with five live rounds and one spent case — a gun that had recently been fired, or at least loaded on an empty chamber for safety.
Springfield Model 1873 “Trapdoor”
The Springfield Model 1873 “Trapdoor“ also saw use in the Lincoln County War, particularly among participants with military connections. The single-shot .45-70 Government was the standard U.S. Army longarm of the period, and surplus or stolen examples were common on the frontier. At the fight at Blazer’s Mills, Buckshot Roberts used a Springfield rifle to devastating effect from a barricaded position.
Sharps Carbines and Frontier Logistics
Sharps carbines were also present in Lincoln County, though less common than the Winchester repeaters. The Sharps was a single-shot breechloader built for accuracy and power at longer range — a fundamentally different tool than the fast-cycling Winchester. Some participants carried Sharps .50-caliber carbines, surplus from the buffalo hunting trade and Indian Wars. For context on how Sharps rifles shaped other frontier battles, see our coverage of Billy Dixon’s legendary shot at Adobe Walls.
But the real story with firearms on the New Mexico frontier wasn’t which guns men carried — it was keeping them fed. Lincoln County in 1878 had no railroad and limited general stores. Ammunition had to be freighted in by wagon from Las Vegas, Santa Fe, or further.
A man carrying a Winchester in .44-40, a Colt in .45, and a Springfield in .45-70 needed three different cartridges, and running dry on any one of them turned an expensive weapon into a club. That logistical reality is a big part of why the .44-40 “Frontier Six-Shooter” pairing was so popular — cutting your ammunition needs from three calibers to two was a genuine tactical advantage when the nearest resupply point was a three-day ride.
Shotguns on the Frontier
Shotguns were present as well. Double-barreled shotguns loaded with buckshot were common frontier weapons, particularly useful for close-range fighting in and around buildings. During the Five-Day Battle, with men shooting from houses and stores at targets across narrow streets, a shotgun loaded with buckshot was arguably more practical than a rifle.
What It Actually Meant
The Lincoln County War wasn’t a simple tale of good guys and bad guys, though Hollywood has tried to make it one for over a century. Tunstall and McSween were challenging a corrupt monopoly, but their own methods weren’t always noble. The Regulators committed murders that were justified as law enforcement but looked a lot like revenge killings. Dolan’s faction was corrupt and violent, but they operated with the cover of legal authority for most of the conflict.
What the Lincoln County War really illustrated was the fragility of law and order in a territory where political power, economic control, and legal authority were all concentrated in the same hands. When that system was challenged, there was no neutral institution capable of resolving the dispute peacefully. The result was three years of bloodshed in a county that had maybe 2,000 residents.
That’s what happens when the law and the monopoly are the same thing. Today, Lincoln, New Mexico, still stands as a State Historic Site where you can walk the same streets and see the firing positions for yourself.
Further Reading
If the Lincoln County War grabbed your attention, these books go deeper than any article can. Robert Utley’s High Noon in Lincoln is the definitive academic history of the conflict — meticulously sourced and fair to all sides. His Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life is the best biography of McCarty/Bonney, cutting through a century of myth to get at the documented record.
Frederick Nolan’s The Lincoln County War: A Documentary History compiles primary sources — letters, court documents, depositions — that let you read what actually happened in the participants’ own words. His The West of Billy the Kid is a photographic companion piece with over 250 images, many published for the first time, that puts faces and places to the names in the story.
For a more narrative approach, Mark Lee Gardner’s To Hell on a Fast Horse reads like a thriller while sticking to the historical record — it’s the first dual biography of Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett, and Robert Utley himself called it “superb narrative history.” Michael Wallis’s Billy the Kid: The Endless Ride takes a revisionist angle, exploring why the Kid became one of America’s most enduring folk figures.
For broader context on the firearms and conflicts of the American frontier, our articles on Jesse James’s weapons, Annie Oakley, and Sam Bass cover other key figures of the same era and the guns they relied on.
Remembering Pascal Cleatus Poolaw, Sr., the most decorated Native American soldier in U.S. history – 4 Silver Stars, 5 Bronze Stars 3 Purple Hearts. He earned a total of 42 medals and citations.
Born on January 29, 1922, in Apache, Oklahoma, Poolaw, a full-blooded Kiowa, served with the United States Army in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.
Poolaw, his father and two brothers joined the Armed forces in 1942 during World War II.
He earned his first Purple Heart when he was wounded in September 1944. While serving with the 8th Infantry Regiment’s M Company near Recogne, Belgium, Poolaw’s unit was engaging fire with the Germans.
He pushed his unit forward under heavy fire and hurled hand grenades at enemy machine guns, causing numerous enemy casualties and as a result of his heroic actions, many of his comrades lives were saved and the company was able to continue the attack and capture strongly defended enemy positions.
Poolaw’s military career did not end in Belgium with fighting Germans. During the Korean War, Poolaw saw combat and was wounded again and awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, a second Purple Heart, and two more Silver Stars.
He returned to the U.S. in 1952 and retired from the Army ten years later. This is not where his military career ends.
During the Vietnam War, all four of the Poolaw’s sons were in the military. In February 1967, his son, Pascal Jr., was injured by a landmine in Vietnam.
This injury resulted in amputation of his right leg below the knee. Poolaw’s youngest son, Lindy, was also drafted. Afraid of what could happen to his sons as the war progressed, Poolaw rejoined the Army at the age of 45. Giving up his rank as a 2nd Lieutenant (a promotion he earned in Korea), with the intentions of serving in direct combat, Poolaw hoped to keep his youngest son away from the front lines by taking his place.
Regulations prohibited two members of the same family from serving in combat at the same time without their consent. Unfortunately, by the time he arrived on the West Coast, Lindy had left for Vietnam the day before.
(Lindy did not make it)
Poolaw was deployed on May 31, 1967 as a first sergeant of the 26th Infantry Regiment’s C Company.
His last Silver Star was for an event that occurred a few months later. On November 7, 1967, Poolaw’s unit were part of a search and destroy mission near the village of Loc Ninh. Poolaw and his unit were ambushed by the Viet Cong force with intensive claymore mine, rocket, small arms, and automatic weapons fire – saving countless lives.
While wounded, he continued moving among his squad making sure everyone was positioned properly while pulling casualties back.
As Poolaw was carrying a wounded soldier to safety, he was struck by a rocket propelled grenade and killed. For his heroic actions Poolaw was awarded a Silver Star and a third Purple Heart posthumously. ” He has followed the trail of the great chiefs,” his wife Irene said at Poolaw’s funeral. His people hold him in honor and highest esteem. He has given his life for the people and the country he loved so much.”
We honor and thank First Sgt. Pascal Poolaw Sr. for his exemplary service and the ultimate sacrifice he made for our country. Rest in peace good warrior. You will never be forgotten!!
For those of you who didn’t know, I shoot a longbow, I have nothing against longbows, I enjoy shooting them tremendously. However, one has to acknowledge that of all the bow designs this is the most primitive one, and yes that does matter. Many things factor into what is actually a good bow, let’s talk about that.
The Power of the Bow
There is an idea which might come from video games, movies or just people reading the draw weight, that a bigger bow is proportionally stronger. But you have to ask yourself what makes a projectile stronger. Well, essentially it’s the energy delivered on target that ultimately determines the power of a bow. What is energy? Hopefully you remember from school that kinetic energy is a function of mass and velocity, with velocity being the more important factor.
As such, what you must understand is that draw-weight =/= energy. It does not matter how big the draw weight is, if the conversation from stored spring energy to kinetic energy is inefficient. What is essential, is how fast the string moves the arrow, and for how long it does this. The higher draw weight, allows a string to move a heavier arrow at a faster or similar speed. Various materials can influence how good a similar design performs, naturally there are well made bows, and less well made bows. But the most important thing is the design of the bow. Bows were not made equally, and generally, longbows are the least efficient design, while Asian composite recurve bows are the most efficient historical designs. But nothing even compares to how efficient modern compound pulley bows are.
Below you will see a table I have created, which took, way, WAY too long to gather the data for. Consider the the column j per pound, which the table is sorted after. That is joules (energy) per pound of draw weight, and it is the best indication of energy transfer efficiency I could come up with. This kind of information is surprisingly difficult to come by with bows currently made, and not just something which is labled on the box usually, unless it’s a legal hunting bow. Some data was readily available, others I had to test or watch tests done by archers including, Armin Hirmer, Joe Gibbs, Tod Cutler and Skallagrim on YouTube who did speed tests. The * represents estimated draw length.
It should be immediately obvious, that the Chinese Manchu bow style, whether it is made of bamboo or fiberglass, is a highly efficient bow design. But it absolutely pales in comparison to the PSE Dominator compound bow. The Mary Rose longbows, are mastercrafted bows by Joe Gibbs, and you can see that even so, they are not that energy efficient, even compared to cheap mass produced bows of a Korean recurve style.
Please note that the crossbows are extremely inefficient, even with 960 pounds, the windless crossbow has less energy than even the smaller mary rose longbow. This has everything to do with draw length. European crossbow were simply extremely inefficient, and compensated for that with a huge weight.
Terminal and flight ballistics.
Energy at release is also not quite the same as energy on impact. A lot like anti tank weapons, arrows penetrate better, when they are longer. The famous length to diameter ratio is as important for an arrow as it is for an APFSDS. As you can imagine, crossbow bolts therefore are not great armour perpetrators. However, if they hit a target that isn’t covered by armour, a crossbow bolt will most likely transfer more energy quickly, potentially causing worse wounds. Additionally, crossbow bolts are more likely to get influenced by the wind and has a higher wind resistance, more quickly losing energy than arrows, and as such as less range in general.
Asian bows like the Manchu style and Mongolian bows fired very long arrows, which were also quite heavy. Asian arrows are often tanged meaning the metal tip extends into the shaft. The Manchu bows generally have a longer draw length, heavier arrows and the tang makes the shaft more rigid.
Rigidity again is important for energy transfer. The tanged arrows help in significantly increasing the energy transfer by reducing the energy wasted on arrow flexing on impact, which is quite pronounced on western arrows. Modern carbon arrows are much more rigid than any historical war arrows ever were. A compound bow doesn’t just impart more energy on the arrow, the modern arrows also transfer it better to the target due to more sophisticated construction. They can also be thinner for the same or heavier weight, allowing less air resistance again increasing energy retention.
Western vs Chinese crossbows
Chinese crossbows are profoundly different in construction from the western medieval type crossbows. From the beginning the Chinese put the trigger of the Asian crossbows on the back of the handle, rather than near the front. This meant that nearly the entire length of the Chinese crossbows is the draw length, rather than just a few inches as on the western ones. This means that Chinese crossbows are essentially just regular bows with crossbow trigger mechanisms.
Historically this has upsides and down sides. Chinese crossbows were made so that weaker people with less skill could fire bigger bows, Song dynasty crossbows were typically 100 pounds draw weight, which is quite powerful, but it is not on the level of Mary Rose or Mongolian archers at the time. Due to the self-imposed limitations of crossbow draw length in Europe, European crossbows were made with increasingly sophisticated draw assistance. In China crossbows were typically hand pulled or feet pulled, the latter required that you lay down. Obviously this is less than practical in battlefield conditions, but probably fine in a siege.
It is possible to imagine, that with a combination of technology, 900 pound steel spanned crossbow, but with a 25 inch draw length and trigger from a Chinese crossbow could be possible, which would indeed have been like a hand ballista, but no such thing was ever made.
Conclusions
Look the primary advantage of the longbow particularly in English use, was that it was cheap and available. It did the job, but it was not a spectacular weapon, and in reality it most often did not win battles. Crecy and Agincourt were the exceptions not the rules, they were victories which astounded the world, and still does today, because knights lost to these peasant weapons. If that was the case all the time, knights wouldn’t never have fought that way in general, and England would have won the 100 year war, which they did not. Longbows have been used everywhere, since basically the stone age, and they are fine weapons, but a true master archer does more than fire a heavy bow.
Some countries in history fielded archers of such epic quality, that they dominated the battlefield. No one is more famous of this than the Mongolian Empire. The Asian composite bows, were not weaker than English longbows in draw weight, but they were more energy efficient. I think it is safe to say that the Mongolian warbows of the 12th century, were stronger than the strongest warbows at Agincourt.
You might also ask why even use crossbows if they are so inefficient? Well, while European crossbows were horribly energy-inefficient compared to bows, they had several other advantages. You could use them in narrow spaces, which made them ideal for firing out of slits in castle sieges, inside houses, or heavily wooded areas in forest. You could fire them rapidly once readied, and you could reload them behind cover. They were excellent skirmishing weapons, but on an open field vs a large formation of archers, they did poorly, as shown by multiple actual European battles where this was tried. But people did use them for a reason, just not to challenge war bows on an open field.
Chinese crossbows, were not nearly has handy, mobile or versatile to use. On the other hand they allowed vast groups of peasants with minimal training, to fire reasonably powerful bows, though probably not the most powerful ones.
Either way, a master archer whether Manchu, Mongolian, Arabic or otherwise, also had the advantage of speed, being able to fire extraordinary many arrows quickly. Crossbows were horribly slow whether Chinese or Western. The master archer chose the composite bows, because they were efficient, fast, had a long range and was far more compact than a longbow. The bow was expensive and so was the archer, but if you wanted the best of the best, this is what you got, they have nothing but advantages over the alternatives and there is a reason why a small group of Mongolian master archers were able to dominate a third of the world in 2 generations, and it was not just that they had horses.