Badasses of the Old West by Erin H. Turner

Author:Erin H. Turner
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780762757572
Publisher: TwoDot
Published: 2014-09-22T00:00:00+00:00

ALFRED PACKER, CANNIBAL

Little to Redeem Him

On August 3, 1886, the Rocky Mountain News reported the ongoing testimony in the trial of Alfred Packer:

Packer’s manner while on the stand was very excited. He detailed his trip, his act of cannibalism, his arrival at Los Pinos Agency, his arrest and subsequent escape from Saguache, his wanderings up to 1883, and his final capture at Fort Fetterman, in a wild, incoherent manner, standing in his shirtsleeves, waving his mutilated hand in the air and haranguing the jury in broken sentences.

He frequently cursed his enemies in very plain words, and refused to be governed by his counsel. Replying once to a remonstrance on their part, he said, “You shut up. I’m on the stand now.”

The trial lasted for three days and the jury reached its verdict in just three hours.

Alfred G. Packer was born on November 21, 1842, in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. Epilepsy was the scourge of his childhood and was a little understood malady at that time. Consequently, young Packer was often socially ostracized from his peers. He and his family—which included his parents, two sisters, and a brother—were members of the Quaker religion.

It is unclear why he left home at an early age, but his medical condition may have played a part in his desire to escape harassment. Some said his own family sent him away due to their misunderstanding of, and inability to deal with, his illness. He was able to serve a short apprenticeship with a printer while trying to hide his condition. Besides the epileptic fits that ravaged him, some side effects included a quarrelsome nature and a high-pitched, shrill voice.

In 1862, at the age of twenty, Packer decided to enlist in the army to fight in the Civil War. When he joined the 16th U.S. Infantry in Winona, Minnesota, his record indicates he was 5 feet 8½ inches tall, of light complexion, with blue eyes and light hair. His occupation was recorded as shoemaker. Although he had been christened with the first name of Alfred, he preferred “Alferd” and had this name tattooed on his right arm along with the name of his encampment, “Camp Thomas,” and his battalion and infantry numbers. Just eight months later, he was discharged “as incapable of performing the duties of a soldier because of epilepsy.”

Records show that Packer reenlisted in Ottumwa, Iowa, six months after his discharge. Nearly a year later he was discharged again due to his epilepsy. The army surgeon stated that Packer’s epileptic seizures occurred “once in 48 hours and sometimes as often as two or three times in 48 hours.”

Packer drifted from job to job. He worked as a hunter, hard rock miner, trapper, teamster, and guide. He had also begun to invent certain facts about his life and work experience, which was unsteady due to his epileptic episodes. In 1873, when Packer was thirty-one years old, he settled in Georgetown, in the Colorado Territory, where a mining accident caused the loss of parts of his index and little finger on his left hand.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.