Etta Place: Mystery Woman

Most of us who follow western legends and folklore know Etta Place as the female member of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid trio but history has some theories of its own about Etta...

The most interesting is that she was really Ann Bassett, the Queen of the Rustlers of Brown Hole, Colorado.  Ann could ride, shoot and had the reputation of being able to hold her own with any outlaw male.  Photo comparisons done in the 1990s give it a 5000 to 1 chance that Etta Place and Ann Bassett were two different women.  Both carried noticeable matching scars.

Comparing known activities of the two women doesn't give historians indisputable answers either as when one was "on vacation",  the other was seen in public avenues.  Other times when Etta reportedly was docking in New York, Ann was seen on her ranch in Colorado. 

Around 1907, Etta slipped out of Western history into legend and the speculations are varied.  Was she a successful madam who operated a brothel in Fort Worth, Texas until dying in a hotel fire in 1962?  Did she live out her life in Argentina where she married a government official? 

Other legends include Sundance checking her into a Denver hospital, where she died alone during an operation, or maybe living with Sundance in Mexico City well into the 1920s.  There are records that she applied for a death certificate for an outlaw in New Mexico in 1911 or 1912.

There is plenty of mystery surrounding one Etta Place, supposed lover of Sundance the Kid, but little proof of just who this woman was or where her life began or ended. 

Next time...Billy the Kid

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This Day in History:  On February 16, 1878, silver dollars become legal tender.  Strongly supported by western mining interests and farmers, the Bland-Allison Act—which provided for a return to the minting of silver coins—becomes the law of the land.

Myths and Mysteries of the Western Frontier: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

What really happened to the outlaws? Were they killed in a San Vicente shoot-out in Bolivia? Or did they live to an old age somewhere in the United States?  The movie said they died in Bolivia...let's go back.

1901, February, the West was getting just a bit too crowded and civilized for one Butch Cassidy and his sidekick,  the Sundance Kid. The Pinkerton Agency was "just too acquainted with our business" Butch told associates.  So Butch, Sundance, and Etta Place boarded a ship for South America to start another life.  They bought a large ranch in Patagonia at the foothills of the Andes Mountains and lived quite well for a few years. 

In 1904 they sold the ranch and went to work for the Concordia Tin Mines at Tres Cruces in Bolivia.  Their honest, hard work attitude won the bosses and even had them guarding the payroll for a time.  But they were not company men and by 1908 they had returned to their former profession - robbing banks. 

Evidently, two robbers (and no one is really sure this was Butch and Sundance), took a large payroll from a mining company and hid in mountains for 2 days before coming into San Vicente, Bolivia.
If this was indeed Butch and gang, he got very careless very fast.  Butch was meticulous about details...how long to hid out, how to approach the unknown.  But according to locals, the outlaws got hungry and needed rest so came to town, asking a local policemen where to stay.  The policemen recognized the mules they were riding from the mining company and set up the stake-out.

From here the story gets crazier - either the battle lasted for an hour, a few hours or the whole night.
The outlaws had left their rifles outside the cantina (?)  and some say Butch was shot going to get them.  Others claim he shot Sundance and then himself so they couldn't get them alive.

The two men in this shoot-out did indeed die and were buried in an Indian cemetery.  Tradition holds that at least one of the men is a Chilean, rather than white.  No one really took much notice - the payroll was returned to the mining company and the robbers were dead.  End of story....

But as late as the 1920s the Pinkerton Detective Agency still listed the outlaws as an open and active case with no mention of their deaths.  Credible sightings of Butch and Sundance were recorded by family and old gang members as late as the 1940, with correspondence arriving just before WWII.  In 1970 Lulu Parker (Butch's sister) wrote about it in her book, Butch Cassidy, My Brother.  

Lastly, an attempt was made to match the DNA from the bodies to that of the immediate family.  The bodies were dug up, identified as the ones shot during the San Vicente shoot-out, transported to the USA, analyzed and...you guessed it.  NOT A MATCH! 

So you decide...Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, one of the most well-known outlaws in the history of the United States West...did they die in Bolivia?  or did they survive and live out their days in ambiguity in the USA?

Next the Mysterious Etta Place...


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On this Day in History:  On February 13, 1822, Missouri Lieutenant Governor William Ashley places an advertisement in the Missouri Gazette and Public Advisor seeking 100 "enterprising young men" to engage in fur trading on the Upper Missouri.