Jack Longstreet, Last of the Desert Frontiersman

Jack Longstreet’s life was a genuine frontier saga entwined with the history of one of the harshest regions in the American West. He first appeared in northern Arizona in 1880, a mysterious stranger who carried a notched gun and wore his hair long to conceal the scars of a severed ear. For the next half century, Longstreet roamed the deserts of Nevada and Arizona as a prospector, rancher, saloonkeeper, trailblazer, and hired gun. Disliked and feared by the powerful ranching and mining interests, Longstreet found friendship among the Southern Paiute Indians, who came to regard him as a leader. He learned their language, married a series of Indian women, and defended the Paiutes against exploitation. Originally published in 1988, Jack Longstreet traces the life of a hard-bitten gunman-rancher-prospector who stubbornly lived life exactly as he pleased.