By Richard Gorby
William Owen (Buckey) O'Neill was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on February 2, 1860. He was a brilliant pupil in college and in law school and developed special gifts and interests in newspaper work, resulting in a job as a law court reporter and stenographer. This led him to Prescott in 1881, as court reporter for Judge DeForest Porter.
His seventeen years in Prescott were crowded with activity, probate judge, sheriff, mayor, and editor. In his early twenties he became drawn to the excitement of card games on Whiskey Row, especially faro, and "bucked the tiger" (went against the odds) with such enthusiasm that he earned the nickname of "Buckey."
As sheriff he became famous by tracking down and bringing to Prescott for trial three men who robbed an Atlantic and Pacific train at Canyon Diablo, between Flagstaff and Winslow. Buckey trailed the outlaws into Utah with a small posse and captured them after a gun battle.
Among his many other activities, he became the editor of the Arizona Miner and held the job until 1884, when he decided to start his own newspaper. With the cattle industry growing, an estimated 625,000 head in 1884, Buckey's idea was to specialize, giving cattlemen their own journal. It would provide them a medium for advertising cattle brands, buying and selling, and keeping abreast of the industry in both Arizona and neighboring cattle country.
After ordering his equipment from Phoenix he launched his paper, Hoof and Horn, in July 1885. It was an eight-page, magazine-sized journal, ten by thirteen inches, ten cents a copy. Never a goldmine, the paper would have folded quickly except that through his courthouse cronies, O'Neill had wrangled the status of "official" and thus was assured of a regular bundle of county legal advertising. Shortly after launching Hoof and Horn, he was able to present the Thirteenth Legislature with a $6,500 printing bill, a huge amount for that time, which the Legislature, later called "The Thieving Thirteenth", paid without a whimper.
Although Hoof and Horn was a paper for cattlemen, its editor from the beginning seemed much more interested in horses:
"It never pays:
To whip a horse when it balks.
To work a horse when it is not well.
To use harsh and sharp language when handling horses.
Don't put a cold bridle bit in your horse's mouth. If you have no other way of warming them, hold them in your hands a few minutes."
This would seem to back up Buckey's description in the Old Capitol Notebook: "His courtesy, gentleness, modesty, and quiet manner of speaking, made his personality fit into a background of kindness." And also that in Prescott, as a captain of a militia company in charge of guarding the scaffold where a murderer named Dilda was being hanged, he fainted as the body went down.
Apparently these accounts of his kindness and gentility were directed toward horses, not people; especially Native Americans. From the June 1889 issue of Hoof and Horn:
"The Tucson Star makes a vigorous and logical protest against the return of Geronimo and his band of cut-throats to Arizona. After all, may it not be best to let them come? They can be met at the train by a sufficient force of willing volunteers, and gracefully shot down as they alight from the extreme of Uncle Sam's imbecility. If the authorities permit these hellish fiends to set their stinking feet in Arizona soil, let their reception be a royal one."
Being unkind to Apaches is acceptable, but to horses? No!
"Don't abuse your horses. If you cannot be along with them without fussing and fighting them all the time, sell them, or trade them to someone who can."
Horses, but not ministers. In an October 1886, article, Buckey describes a meeting with Mr. Clark Tingly, "A deep theological student" who describes how religion could affect the cowboy: "Instead of cuss words and bad whiskey we would have piety and prayer meetings on our round-ups. When branding or gathering beef cattle, we would do no work on Sundays or late Saturday nights. The development of spiritual life would be deep and pervading. Instead of visiting saloons and spending hard-earned money on liquor and cards, we would have cowboy Sunday school picnics and send any money that might be left over to support foreign missionary societies."
Buckey, who spent some of his spare time drinking and gambling with friends, obviously felt no need to comment. Surprisingly, the major Hoof and Horn editorial attack was not on Apaches but, in 1887, on supposed Compatriots and friends: County Treasurer E.J. Cook and Bank of Arizona cashier W.E. Hazeltine. Cook was charged with defaulting to the sum of $9,000 in his deposits to the Bank of Arizona and was removed from office. Hazeltine was suspected, certainly by Buckey, at least, but was not removed. Cook was tried three times and finally exonerated. He was not exonerated by O'Neill, however. In the March 31, 1887 Hoof and Horn:
"No man ever stood higher in the confidence of his constituents than did E.J. Cook. No man ever betrayed public trust more cruelly than he did. Through the assistance of W.E. Hazeltine, the cashier of the Bank of Arizona, an institution of which he had made the depository of the public funds, he was able to conceal for years his pillaging from the public treasury."
E. J. Cook gave a large dinner party to celebrate his release. There is no evidence that Buckey O'Neill was invited.
Hoof and Horn's last edition was September 19, 1889, with no mention of its demise. Sheriff O'Neill stated later that he needed more time for his sheriff duties. On of his last editorial comments: "You will never forget to warm the bridle bits of your horses before inserting them into the mouth, if you will try the experiment of putting your tongue to a piece of frosty iron. The result is just the same, only the horse isn't able to complain."
Richard Gorby is a volunteer at the Sharlot Hall Museum Archives and Library.
Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number: (PO 1112pd ). Reuse only by permission.
"Buckey" O'Neill's 1880s newspaper Hoof and Horn was meant for cattlemen, but the paper became the official publication of the "thieving thirteenth" legislature and often contained horse care advice and political attacks.