Butch Cassidy by W. C. Jameson

Author:W. C. Jameson [Jameson, W.C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor Trade Publishing
Published: 2012-10-15T04:00:00+00:00

A wanted circular for Harry Longabaugh, the Sundance Kid, and his companion, Etta Place, distributed throughout portions of Argentina. Author’s collection.

William A. Pinkerton (center), flanked by agents Pat Connell (left) and Sam Finly (right). Author’s collection.

Twelve

South America

The South American experiences of Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, and Etta Place are fraught with conjecture, conflicting and contradictory reports, exaggerated tales, careless and incomplete research, and error-filled reporting. It must also be considered that, during this time, other American outlaws came to South America and became involved in robbing banks, coaches, and payroll shipments in the manner of the Wild Bunch. Several such depredations attributed to Cassidy and Harry Longabaugh were likely the work of others. Since Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid had high profiles as a result of numerous wanted posters distributed throughout Argentina and Bolivia, the natives simply assumed, to a large extent, that it was those two particular outlaws and no others who conducted bank and payroll robberies.

Lack of accurate reporting and confusion concerning the identities of the perpetrators of most of these crimes has long been a troublesome business, often replete with error, speculation, and surmise. The combination of careless, false, and inadequate chronicling would eventually prove to be an important consideration relative to what we think we know regarding the lives, and perhaps the deaths, of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

A great deal of the truly pertinent and substantive information relative to the South American experiences of Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, and their companion, Etta Place, comes from researcher Ann Meadows, author of Digging Up Butch and Sundance (1996) who, with her husband, traveled throughout the region tracking down Cassidy fact and lore and sifting through numerous accounts and references. While Meadows’s book sometimes reads like a travelogue, it does contain an impressive amount of information and documentation regarding the activities of Cassidy, Longabaugh, and Place in South America. Though some of the conclusions advanced by Meadows in her book are questionable, the publication is ultimately a product of diligent and patient research.

What is known for certain is that Longabaugh and Etta, still using the names Harry and Ethel Place, arrived in Buenos Aires in late March 1901 and checked into the Hotel Europa. According to one of Meadows’s discoveries, Buenos Aires journalist Francisco Juárez wrote that Cassidy arrived with them instead of traveling to the western United States and participating in the Wagner train robbery, as many researchers have contended. If Juárez is correct and Cassidy made the trip to Buenos Aires, the outlaw apparently did not stay at the Hotel Europa, or anywhere else in Buenos Aires for that matter, for no references of such have been found. It is certainly possible that Longabaugh and Etta Place wanted a room to themselves, but had Cassidy arrived with them it is reasonable to assume he would have stayed at the same hotel as his traveling companions. The inability to formally account for Cassidy’s presence in Buenos Aires lends some credence to the hypothesis

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