 Today's speaker is well-known, probably to pretty much everyone in the room, is I see William A. White III, but perhaps better known as Bill White, I guess, in his third year here as a professor in our Department of Anthropology. As you probably know, Bill is an historical archaeologist with interests in digital dissemination of archaeological content, community-based research, artifact analysis, who has a vast, almost encyclopedic experience in cultural resource management projects. So the length and breadth of the United States and beyond, also? Where? U.S., well, so... It's only been paid to work in the U.S. or its territories. He hails from the place we'll be talking about today, Boise, Idaho, the University of Idaho, where he did his bachelor's and master's degrees, and he did his PhD at the University of Arizona. Today he's going to be speaking about what he just told me is a long-term passion obsession. What was the word you used? Both. That regards his hometown, and it's a super-interesting case of an African-American veteran from the First World War who, in 1940, was evicted from his house, which led to this protracted arm standoff with the forces of law and order, this person by the name of Pearl Royal Hendrickson. And so, Bill's today going to be talking to us about his research on this topic, which sounds super interesting. So let's turn our attention over to him for what he has to say. Thank you, everyone, for coming. I've got to make sure that I stay on time. Yeah, so I am here. I'm actually excited to give a discussion about a site that I have been thinking about for many years, ever since I first found out about it. And it is in the hills overlooking Boise, Idaho, where I'm from. And it was the site of a not well-recorded and little-known standoff. So the whole story begins in 2014 when I came across this newspaper series that discussed a standoff between an individual that's described as a recluse, as a hermit, and a group of law enforcement that many estimate was up to 60 individuals. So, being from Idaho, this is that iconic Wild West history that, as a kid, you hear these stories all the time, and everybody's parents are talking about them, specifically the dads. So this is definitely one of those Wild West masculine macho-type stories that it's difficult to get out of your head. The other thing that I couldn't stop thinking about is the fact that it follows on the tradition of the gun culture and stand-your-ground ethos that in Idaho has been around ever since I can remember, goes back generations. Idaho is still, gun culture and gun ownership runs deep in the state, and there is an ethos of stand-your-ground, even in the face of law enforcement, if you have been wrong, right? So there have been other standoffs like Randy Weaver that happened when I was a kid, and there's other standoffs that happened in the West, and this is kind of something that it seems like is in line with that whole story. So it's the tragic story of the death of two marshals and this World War I veteran, Pearl Royal Hendrickson. So without ado, I'll start with kind of my biggest question, how in the world did a Black World War I veteran end up in a standoff with dozens of law enforcement in the Boise Foothills? So most of the records that we have come from newspaper accounts have been unable to identify the police records from this. I have a feeling there with the FBI, as I'll explain. The whole thing starts when Pearl Royal Hendrickson moves to Idaho around 1925. He told others at the time that he moved to Idaho after he got cheated out of a mining claim in Colorado, so it's clear that he was interested in mining in the American West. In 1925, he releases land that was owned by a white landowner, Charles Allen, who owned almost half a section in the Boise Foothills. And Hendrickson spent his time working four different mining claims that were in the hills, spread across about 80 acres. He lived in a small cabin, he kept chickens in a garden, and he just kind of kept to himself working there in the hills. In 1939, Charles Allen decided to sell his property to the U.S. Forest Service so that they could create what was then being called Boise Mountain Park, but it's now part of the Boise National Forest. So Charles Allen agrees to sell his property. One of his tenants that's there is Hendrickson. Well, Hendrickson argues that he didn't have to leave the property because there was mineral wealth on his claims that needed to be considered separately from the land sale, or basically that he wasn't going to leave the property until they recognized his mining claims. So he took, he used his retirement from the U.S. Army to take this to court beginning in October 1939. At the same time as he was fighting in court, he started to armor his cabin with car parts and other pieces of metal and told many individuals that the only way they were going to take him out of there was feet first. So on the morning of August 1st, 1940, Deputy Marshal John Glenn with Boise City Police Captain George Haskins leave the city of Boise around 5 a.m. in a cab that they had rented to go up into the foothills to deliver a restraining order or a warrant for contempt of court to Hendrickson. They arrived about an hour later and Deputy Marshal Glenn knocked on the door and Hendrickson asked who it was, and according to the other police account by Haskins, as the Deputy Marshal explained why they were there, Hendrickson just shot him in the abdomen or shot him in the chest, fatally wounding him and started opening fire on the other police officer in the cab. So the other police captain scrambled back into the cab, they drove back down the hill, they tried to get to the closest place with a phone that was actually in the city of Boise and right away they called together a group of other law enforcement, I believe six deputies and police officers and US Marshal George Mephan. They came back about an hour later and the car stalled, and I'll show you in a minute, it stalled in the road right in front of the cabin and Hendrickson fired two shots, one of them hitting George Mephan in the face, fatally wounding him, by that time the other Marshal is actually dead and the other five law enforcement are pinned down behind the car. So at this point it kind of gets, it goes into the realm of oral history, urban legend and newspaper accounts. For hours, for a while these law enforcement were pinned behind the car, but a steady stream of other law enforcement, sheriffs, prison guards, other police officers and other folks all start coming up to the cabin as they discover this is going on. The newspaper accounts say there's anywhere from 30 to 60 law enforcement who show up, they take up positions around the cabin and they are firing with a wide range of different rifles and handguns. At a certain point some of them decide that they should use sticks of dynamite and they throw dynamite at the cabin. Ultimately the cabin is caught on fire, Hendrickson is returning fire against the police location throughout the entire thing until about the last hour or 45 minutes. Sometime before noon FBI agent Guy Bannister arrives from the city of Boise and at that point he organizes a raid on the cabin because what's happening is law enforcement is showing up and taking positions and there's not really a coordinated attack of cover and advance on the cabin and as I'll talk about more it's difficult for them to actually advance on the cabin. But Guy Bannister is able to actually organize the forces to get them to cover each other and to make a raid on the cabin. They get to the cabin, Hendrickson is mortally wounded with a severe arm injury his arm is almost blown off. He is taken out and dies on route to the city of Boise and the two marshals bodies are recovered for burial. So that's the shootout. It takes place over across about five hours, three hours of firefight but it begs to ask the question who was Pearl Royal Hendrickson? Pearl Hendrickson was born to Elwood and Georgiana Hendrickson who were both from Maryland originally. They moved to Kansas. He is part of a family. He had at least five other brothers and sisters. They grew up in rural Kansas. Fortunately his name makes it easier for him to be found in census records because there's only one Pearl Hendrickson that's a man in the US census but it doesn't appear like there's very much on this individual. So in my research I find that by 1905 he's living with another family that is not of his same last name. It's unknown if they're relatives but they're living in an area where this section of the census rolls in that part of Kansas have black and white farmers and other agricultural family all living in this area. By 1917 his draft card says that he is living alone at 1214 Buchanan Street. The building is no longer there but he's in Topeka, Kansas. So one thing to know about African Americans in Kansas, outside of Texas Kansas has the largest black population in the American West and many of the firsts for African Americans come out of African Americans in Kansas. For example, the first unit that's organized in the Civil War is a colored unit that comes from Kansas. You might notice that the Board of Education, I am trying to think, Brown versus the Board of Education is actually Brown versus the Topeka Board of Education. So there's a long history of activism there in that part of Kansas. Anyway, for his draft card shows that he is actually a conscientious objector to World War I. Nevertheless, he is drafted to Company II Battalion of the 805th Pioneer Infantry. He goes to Camp Funston where he spends the summer learning, preparing for life on the western front. He is actually sent to the western front right before the armistice but spends months there working after the demobilization process. Okay, the world that we have now really actually is shaped by several events. World War I is actually one of them. This is the first time that we had mobilized chemical, mechanical, psychological warfare on a scale like this. Rough estimates, at least 70 million individuals mobilized for this. 16 million civilians and combatants killed. If you add in the influenza, which was inflamed because of these conditions, the totals go over 100 million individuals worldwide affected. This is global war between the nation states in Europe and all of their colonies. We drafted individuals from throughout Africa and the Caribbean, so African-Americans from the United States are not the only black soldiers that are serving there on the western front. It is international war too, so multiple continents with the same belligerence going on. And the United States sends almost 5 million individuals over for the war effort. So in 1917 when the United States decides that it's going to join the war, it is not ready for the western front. There actually no nation at the time when this war started was really ready. But of all the nations that got in, the United States was actually the least prepared because it was the furthest away and it wasn't connected to Great Britain or France, so it didn't have the direct benefit of a nation right there that could help it. Nevertheless, the United States organizes 16 different camps. Camp Funston was one of them. There were six camps where African-American soldiers were trained at Camp Funston. Black soldiers were trained separately from white soldiers. And the training that happened there was not deemed sufficient by the French or the British, so they actually had to go another training round when they got to Europe to actually learn how to survive in the trenches. But nevertheless, machine gunnery and artillery was taught specifically at Camp Funston. However, most of the individuals who got the artillery training were white because the educational levels required for the math in order to run artillery like that. Many of the black soldiers actually didn't have that. Many of them were illiterate. Many of them learned how to read there at Camp Funston. So machine gunnery also was a combat position that they didn't really want African-Americans to learn any of those positions. What they really wanted was African-Americans to serve in a service capacity. So Hendrickson's experience is not like these other famed units that we know, the 369th and 370th, which served with distinction the longest time on the western front of any United States regiments. Many different war awards came from the French government for their service because they actually served under French commanders, which that's interesting. But most African-Americans soldiers were mainly focused on drill and learning how to build roads and repair other trenches and other things. So Hendrickson's experience is not like the Harlem Hellfighters or any of these other African-American units that served on the front line. He arrived at the tail end of the war. The German units in the Marne sector were actually on the retreat by that time. The major offensive of the summer had pretty much been spent. The German army was reeling from the losses and their inability to take France. And so at that time, the United States, French, British, Belgian, many other forces were actually driving the Germans back out of France. So Hendrickson arrives and he spends, there's a history of his unit. They spent anywhere from 10 to 12 hours a day repairing infrastructure, setting up telephone lines, repairing roads, recycling usable material from the war, things that had been left behind, and making sure that all the German infrastructure had been destroyed so that they couldn't come back and use it again. So more individuals in Hendrickson's unit lost their lives due to sickness and accidents. Hendrickson returns in 1919. He briefly lives with his mother and a brother in Kansas. And then we know from the newspaper accounts by 1925 he's living in the Boise Foothills. It's not known if he had a spouse or any children. It seems like he was an individual who just remained a bachelor and then tried to move to a remote place where he could just be himself. So all of this stuff is happening at a time when African-Americans are asserting their rights in the United States. So black soldiers who are many whom drafted, many more individuals are drafted than actually enlist, they realize that they actually have two enemies, the racism that they faced in the United States, but also amongst the other American troops and the actual enemies on the battlefield from Germany. So when they returned back, these individuals who had been in the trenches, who had worked all these long hours, they were no longer willing to accept white supremacy. They were willing to advocate upon their own behalf. And black institutions actually understood this. And so the NAACP, the United Negro Improvement Association, led by Marcus Garvey, they really looked towards these, specifically the officers, but also these enlisted individuals and recruit them to these groups. At the same time, there's also the scare specter of the United States going socialist or having communism. Any of the kind of things that happened in Russia, they don't want that kind of stuff to happen. In fact, Germany almost became a communist state as a result of World War I. Military organizations, and as I'll describe, the FBI start to watch these communist and socialist groups that have a large population of African American veterans that come back. So what ends up happening is anti-black collective violence across the United States. And in many instances, black soldiers become the ones who organize the defense of black communities. As soon as black soldiers get back, there are many accounts of individuals in the southeastern United States, the eastern United States, deciding that the use of collective violence is the way to maintain segregation in the United States. Between 1917 and 1944, race riots gripped the United States. At least 24 major race riots at that time. 10 race riots in 1919 alone. So this is after African Americans returned back, many of whom have been mustered out, but many others are still wearing their uniforms and trying to assert their rights. That is seen as a threat to white supremacy. At the same time that this is going on, so as we can see in this, there are also dozens of white individuals who are killed because many of these cases, not only does the military organize against African Americans, but veterans and other black people from the community arm themselves and organize their own defense that includes urban warfare tactics like having position snipers, having roadblocks and other things. And a lot of times these individuals who are white that are killed are police officers. So standing their ground against law enforcement is an aspect of this response. So African Americans really start resisting. The violence increases at this time, but it really does set the stage for what comes next in the civil rights movement and decades-long movement towards civil rights for African Americans in the United States. So at the same time, law enforcement is also changing too in the United States. There are several different presidential executive orders and legislation that come forward that create these kind of interstate law enforcement organizations. The precursor to the FBI, the Department of Justice Bureau of Investigation, is created in 1908 to investigate anarchist, communist, and union leaders, but also to investigate interstate crimes. At this time there really hadn't been an organization that was dedicated towards the investigation and prosecution of interstate crimes. And so it starts off as an aspect of the Department of Justice. By World War I, Woodrow Wilson and others in the government are, as I mentioned, keenly interested in preventing any kind of propaganda that would be against the United States war effort. So the Espionage Act, which is actually still a relevant law today. Actually, Edward Snowden is one of the most prominent individuals. Part of his, the cases brought against him draw upon things from the Espionage Act. So this is actually a still existing law in the United States. And it prohibits the copying, recording pictures, or any descriptions of any information that relates to the national defense with the intent to injure the United States. It also created criminal penalties to anyone who was obstructing enlistment in the armed forces. So remember, there was a draft going on at this time, so they didn't want anyone to stop the draft. And then, as kind of a side aspect of it, the Espionage Act was used against labor leaders and African American organizers to try and prevent them from having collective action against any threat to the status quo, capitalism, or supremacy. Paralleling that, the Military Investigation Division is also created to investigate crimes within the military but specifically has several open cases against black veterans and black enlisted. By 1920, the Volstead Act makes the manufacturer sale, transport, or import of alcohol legal in the United States. And as we have heard many times, that really fuels organized crime in the black community, European Americans, and immigrants. And then the 1920s bring on a new wave of depression that pushes many individuals into crime. But this time, not only is the United States codifying its interstate crime fighting force, it's actually getting many opportunities to test both the legal and law enforcement aspects of it. So by this time, the federal agents really kind of pioneer that whole strategy of doing background investigation and reconnaissance on individuals who are found guilty of interstate crimes. Their strategies include not just raids on criminals, but also courtroom cases. So at this time, many of the individuals that we're familiar with as the organized crime bosses of this time period, Al Capone, but also other bank robbers, Machine Gun Kelly, John Dillinger, Babyface Nelson, Bonnie and Clyde, Mon Doc Barker, and the other dozens of associates that are associated with this, the FBI really gets its skill and ability to conduct these kind of strategic, coordinated raids on well-armed, entrenched individuals. Local police, some of these techniques go down to local police, especially in larger cities like San Francisco and New York, where they're using fingerprints and photos. They had already been using these things for a long time, but this becomes normal and commonplace across the United States at that time. But one of the aspects, especially with that organized anti-black violence, is trying to maintain white supremacy. So the law ends up being one of the things that fights against African Americans. So African Americans who come back, they end up in the situation where they're fighting for self-defense against those who want to reinstate and reinforce white supremacy. They are fighting to dispel the disinformation about African American people, specifically with these race riots about who was starting it, who were the belligerents, because that matters in a court of law. And they're also fighting in courts against Jim Crow and other laws that provide differential treatment for African Americans. But at the same time, we have this group of individuals who are not willing to be peaceful at all times and are definitely not afraid of using violence. Okay, so all of this stuff is happening at the same time. And then a hundred years later, I try to scour the forest, finding the evidence of a shootout. Overlooking Boise, Idaho, and it's not as easy as it sounds. So I had the newspaper accounts, as we'll talk a little bit more about. But the question of where on the earth did this happen, we didn't know. So the site was not actually recorded as an archaeological site. There's no historical marker. There's no, like I said, I spent years, I have not been able to find the depositions from the law enforcement that were actually there. So we're really trying to use landforms and other historical maps to find a place that most similarly matches photos and other hand-drawn maps in the newspaper. Using GLO maps, I was able to identify the location of Charles Allen's property, the township and range and section. And then looking at other attributes on USGS quadrangles, I'm able to locate a perennial water source and other landforms that match the photos. So there is a forest service road that runs right by the site. The site is actually about 75 meters away from the road. But this road is not well maintained. Nevertheless, this entire area is used because it's on the National Forest for camping, hunting and target practice. So there are all kinds of artifacts. The other thing that was complicated the efforts was differentiating these early 20th century artifacts from this other deposition. There's fresh garbage there from a few years ago, right? This is probably one of the better drawings we had of this entire ordeal. And so this gave me an idea, not only direction this is facing east, that's facing north, but also a location of where law enforcement took up positions as it relates to the cabin. And also it's hard to see here, but you can also see where the reporters were hiding. They drew themselves into the picture. There's no real evidence of the reporters being there. However, the idea was that there would be a lot of ammunition cartridges in these locations where law enforcement had been firing on the cabin, and that there also would be a cabin where there would be a lot of ammunition right there. So the idea was, let's do a metal detector survey and we can find where these things are at. Finding the location of the cabin was a little bit easier. It's difficult to see, but this road is just shimmering with broken glass from target practice. So identifying early 20th century artifacts, this concentration right here is where most of the items are. And then it's difficult to see the pin flags, but there's other things from the 1930s and 1940s in that area. But that red dot also is right by this rectangular feature that is actually in a hillside. It's difficult to see in this, but all of these pink flags are located either residential items like ceramics, tableware items, or bottle glass that has maker's marks or some other kind of identification. So this feature is partially slumped in, but it's roughly rectangular. And along this stream bed that goes out of this picture, there are a series of stones that are all in alignment. As if this stream was being channelized. It's difficult to see, well you can't see it in this one, but there's another photograph where that old snag tree from the, the snag from this tree is actually right by that feature. The most diagnostic things were bottle glass. There was several items that were made that could not have been made after the 1940s. And one of the bottle-based fragments was made by Owens, Illinois in 1935. There's also a broken ceramic pipe that gives evidence that there is some kind of channelization of the stream or water conveyance there, which makes sense if Pearl was up there with a garden. The majority of the site is no longer there. It's unknown if it was burned down, if it had been harvested for lumber or whatever, or if just over time pieces of it had been broken and taken away. But there's no architectural remains except for a little bit of electrical circuitry and some screws and nails. And we didn't find a layer of charcoal, so I'm not sure what ended up ultimately happening with this thing. All there is is a rectangular feature and an artifact scatter that dates to the time period. Alright, so in addition to that, in addition to the sketch, we actually had a couple of fairly decent photographs of the cabin from different directions. Once again, there's a dead tree. This was the large tree that's there. Now it's just a dead snag. But the one thing that you can see in this photograph is that the entire hillside is denuded of vegetation, except for a couple of trees. Nowadays, the case has changed and that actually complicated the idea of a metal detector survey. So on this landform like this, most of this vegetation is actually up to your chest high, different kinds of brushes and willows. This area was open for survey and we did do transects on east-west axis at 10-meter intervals, but it didn't actually collect as many artifacts. It's just simply walking back and forth and looking for the ammunition shells and trying to figure out which ones are actually from the same time period. So we did do a metal detector survey over this. In the brush, we got almost no results. And definitely in this location where law enforcement was positioned, we didn't get very much results. But one of the things we were able to confirm is that the cabin feature location is roughly the same distance as a way as is described in the newspaper accounts. So while we don't have the ammunition shells in this location, the distances match up with the crest of the hill, where this location would have actually been open for fire from law enforcement. So the other thing we did is make a 3D model of the site, a rough 3D model, using a drone, DJI Mavic air. That was okay, I did it on purpose. So the other question was view shed analysis, which I haven't actually finished at all. I just created the model. Wow, we can just look at it this way. Perhaps we won't. Oh, you got to love technology. I'm not going to spend all our time on that. What we do see from this though is that the cabin's location, and we do have a 3D model that we can actually measure these distances, but the cabin would have been all the line of fire this way without any vegetation. And the crest of the hill right here, specifically this road right here where the car stalled and Deputy Marshal Mephen was shot in the face, right here this location is all wide open. And originally when I got there, I thought that maybe law enforcement would have come around this hill this way to come back this way or that they would have maneuvered around this to come this way because they would have been above the cabin on all three sides. But it looks like law enforcement just came up the road and not knowing what they were facing, not having a coordinated understanding of what they were facing. They just kind of stopped out of sight over here and then went to the two closest hills where they would actually have a chance to fire on the cabin. So the other thing that we did, we had several photographs like this that show some of the firearms that law enforcement were using in the firefight. Based on having some gun collectors and other individuals who know about firearms and Boise help me identify these old historic firearms, that gave me an idea of what kinds of cartridges to look for when I was out there. So you can see that there's a wide range of different bolt action, lever action, and pump shotguns. It's difficult to see, but some of the law enforcement on their hips have 38 Special, which was a common law enforcement round at the time. Another thing that you can see here, this gun right here is an 1895 Winchester, which in that Ida B. Wells statement about how African Americans should have a Winchester and keep that deer for their own protection. These are the guns against this car, which are the ones that supposedly were taken from Pearl Royal Hendrickson's cabin. So these are the firearms that he was using to hold off law enforcement, and they are just an overview of widely available firearms at the time. So the other thing that I thought going into this is that we would have kind of those FBI machine gun things that we've seen before in the mobster movies where they have this wide range of machine guns and they're shooting like that. This is not what ended up happening there. Law enforcement responded with the tactics and the firearms that they had readily available. So we were actually able to match up many of these cartridges with firearms that were shown in that photo. The .44 Colt is a widely available firearm in the American West. The .38, including the .38 Special, was preferred by many law enforcement agencies across the United States, and it started off as a military weapon. The .44 is also commonly used in the US military, but it wasn't really widely used after the 1940s. The other thing that we have is that high-powered .250 Remington UMC cartridge that would have came from the Savage Model 20, which is this bolt action gun that's seen right here. So we have firearms that are connected to the time period that were known to have been used by law enforcement and some that actually are connected to firearms that are shown in the historic photographs. Okay, so then the next question that I had to, you know, couldn't get out of my head is, was this, you know, what role did race play in this? Was this an extraordinary response to this kind of entrenched individual? Because today law enforcement does not conduct wide open raids on entrenched individuals without some kind of negotiation or without some kind of protracted strategy. Back in that time, the FBI and other organizations, they did do these kind of targeted attacks. So I was wondering, was this racially motivated? Hendrickson, it's pretty clear he came from a generation that was giving ideas of Stanger Ground, and he was a veteran that had actually served in a foreign theater. So those kind of ideas of Stanger Ground and meet force with force would have been something that would have been, you know, part of his psychology. After he attacked two marshals, he pretty much knew what the consequences were going to be. And he had already stated beforehand that he was not willing to give up without a fight. So this response by Hendrickson is in a line with many of these other black resistances to white supremacy. Maybe this entire situation was what Hendrickson was trying to get away from. Some of the other interviews with folks who knew him, they did believe that the FBI came for him because he fought it in court, first of all, but also because he had been telling others that he was going to resist. By law enforcement taking that individual first, the other people who were living on that property, it might be a little bit easier to get them, right? But also he came from an area and from a world where anti-black collective action was commonplace and maybe escaping to the West and living back in the forest and trying to get away from all that. Maybe that's actually what he was trying to do up in the hills. But we can never put out of our mind the fact that he shot two marshals and killed them. I mean, that is the response of law enforcement to meet force with force was also very common at that time. The law enforcement, based on what we know from the firearms, from photographs and from the newspaper accounts, they responded in the way that they had against other armed individuals in the United States. So this was actually a response of law enforcement. The coordinated attack comes from FBI agents' training and experience of more than a decade dealing with armed individuals who are criminals. So when the FBI agent arrived is when this entire thing was able to come to an end because they were able to use that tactical expertise to organize these forces. African-Americans and other white people who, old-timers who were familiar with this event, they do think that he was singled out because he was black, but it's difficult to know because this is a common response from law enforcement, especially in the West. I mean, there's many stories of law enforcement forming posseys and serving out not just mob justice, but also armed attacks on entrenched individuals. Okay, so where am I going with this one? The site is on Boise National Forest land. It's in an area that's difficult for the Forest Service to protect. It is not in the Ada County, so the Sheriff Law Enforcement, they're not actually patrolling the site. I've talked with archeologists from the National Forest, they feel like setting up a memorial or something like that would only invite individuals to try and metal detect and try to disturb it. So at this point, it is recorded as an archeological site. It will be avoided by the Forest Service, but there's no plan really to draw any attention to this at this point. But I am interested in if there are other kinds of standoffs like this. The African-American response to collective anti-black action, we know about these race riots and we know about these most egregious situations. We don't know about these individual situations where individuals on their own stood their ground against law enforcement. And then just a couple weeks ago, just when I thought I had the article all wrapped up, there's another scholar, Joel Cook, who's doing work on the Harlem Hell Fighters, and he has identified locations where a famous battle that ended up in the only two Medal of Honor people from that unit, he's identified the location, he also used kind of a 3D modeling technique and it would be interesting to look at the landscapes in France where black soldiers actually saw action and then try to find these other landscapes where, as veterans, they also experienced other forms of resistance. So at the end, I mean, this radical militancy that really draws upon masculinity and these other ideas of stand your ground is kind of iconic for definitions of the new Negro. And so in many ways, this entire situation is absolutely what we would expect for that time period in the United States. So there's no end to the individuals who helped me out with this. David Valentine from Idaho Power, he's very interested in this. Joe Bergstrom, the archaeologist, who helped me identify, record and protect this site. Charles Davidson, who is a firearms collector and kind of a historian, he helped me identify many of those firearms. Folks at the State Historic Preservation Office, the University of California, who gave me the money for a metal detector. But most importantly, Pearl Royal Hendrickson, George Mephin and John Glenn, who lost their lives in this tragic event in the Boise Foothills. Thank you all. Yes? Just a question factually, I thought you said at the beginning that when the first two marshals showed up, they didn't go there to serve on some legal papers or something. So if that's true, then the question of what the posse and the armed response changes a little bit. They didn't originally go there to do that, or what are your thoughts on how that all played out? So you're right, the Boise police chief and the deputy marshal did come to serve the warrant. And at that point they were going to arrest him, but then he killed the marshal, right? So the organized response that we see nowadays where law enforcement would have a strategy and they would take the landscape into account and they would do all these things to try and protect law enforcement from exposing them to danger. You don't necessarily see that in this situation. What you see is law enforcement driving right up the road with guns, going right into the firing zone of this cabin, and then another marshal gets killed, right? And also, you know, a place like Idaho specifically, I can see how this kind of event would attract law enforcement from everywhere. So the organized response, the organized first effort was one police officer and a deputy marshal to serve the papers and arrest the individual. The next response was deputies and police officers and another marshal to come up and then they were going to be the ones who took him out dead or alive or whatever. As the news spread, more and more cars just kept coming up until the posse grew. Yeah, we got a lot at the same time. So with Hendrickson, see he was described as a loner pretty much through his life, but was there much of an African American community and Boise? Like where did he get his guns and the ammunition and everything? Did he have connections back in the Boise? Is there any record on that? So that's a good question too. It's known that not all Army soldiers handed in their firearms, like now they hand in their firearms, but in World War I, many of them actually kept their firearms. Many did hand them in, but it wasn't a coordinated thing. It was kind of unit by unit, regiment by regiment. So it's unknown how many firearms just came right from the Army to individuals' homes. There was a small black community in Boise, but it's really interesting. There are shows that familiarity was kind of key. So if you'd lived there long enough and you knew people who lived there, there wasn't the same kind of entering through the back doors all the time or sitting in separate sections. There wasn't segregated schools because there was only a few dozen black people that lived in the city of Boise at that time. So buying a gun wouldn't have been hard for anyone, especially someone who says they're going to use it for hunting. Those firearms are not machine guns. There's not the same kind of apprehension now back then. If an individual had the money and they looked like they were an upstanding individual, selling a gun to an individual wasn't really that odd. So it wasn't unknown for black people to have firearms in the city of Boise, and also not unknown for black people just in general in the United States to have guns. I'll come back. I'll choose B. Yeah, that's a good thing to point out, because the state of Idaho specifically prohibited Chinese from owning mining claims and for participating in mining. Those were old laws by 1940 that still stood at the time. There wasn't a specific law against African-Americans owning mining claims. However, I can't remember the specifics of the Mining Act of, you know, 1879. But there is a thing about the United States government paying for mining claims and that there are certain kinds of claims that couldn't be given up except for by the person who claimed them. I haven't found the mining records that show that he actually formally patented any of these claims. But the idea is that he had made these claims in what was to become National Forest Land, and he was living on rented land. And so his thing was, well, if you're going to do that for this, you know, landowner, what about my claims? So I don't know specifically where the claims that he was looking for are. It's just noted that they span an area about 80 acres and there was four different kinds of mineral claims. Yeah, and I haven't figured that out either, because I have the polygon where the claim for Charles Allen is at. But without knowing where his mining claims are, I don't know if those were still in the public domain and that he was still just living on this land. Yeah, and I know in the city of Boise, African-Americans are not allowed to buy property. Through agreement through the National Association of Realtors, which any realtor, in order to be part of the realtors, you have to agree that you will never sell to anyone that's outside of the race of the area in which you're selling the property, which in the state of, you know, Idaho and Boise at that time means that you're not going to sell to any African-Americans. And so your license to sell property could be revoked by selling to an African-American. Now, there was many ways they got around it, because there are folks, my other research in River Street neighborhood, many of them own their own homes. Many times they either had a white person buy it and then they transferred it, you know, out of state or they created some kind of lease system where it was X amount of years, where it was leased to own or something like that. I mean, there was many ways to get around it. Also realtors themselves capitalized on it because if a black person owns a house here, you can sell the house right next to it and then you can scare other white people to sell their house for lower prices and then sell it to black people for inflated. That's common, common thing for realtors. So they weren't necessarily violating their agreements to the National Association of Realtors by selling a house right next to a black person or on the same block or something like that, because that still fits the demographic milieu. But then it's all about, you know, so there's many ways to own property. I don't, Charles Allen wasn't selling that to Pearl though. Yes. Trenches and build up trench supports, whether that was informing. So if he was on cleanup, he would have experienced a lot of out, those vernacular approaches to fortifying trenches. So it'd be interesting to see if there's any sort of ties that way between service. Pushing on the mineral rights, there might, did anything ever happen with that property? Yeah. Because that would be the other way to go, to look at what happened, who's the money behind that. Because I think you've got two different kinds of racial bias going on, the first being what Henderson, you know, identified as, they're coming for what is rightfully mine. But the other part is the original police may not have come intending this to be a fatal interaction, but as soon as others heard it and it becomes an opportunity to go have free shot shooting at a black guy. Or just free shooting like any which way, right? Because we don't, the other... COPS already was extra incentive to go and take them out. Definitely incentive, right? But the Idaho response of law enforcement at that time is just go with guns and get them. And there's other shootouts. Yeah, probably, huh. That's why I'm looking for the... I think it's Idaho County. The Ada County Sheriff's do not have any records. The Idaho County Sheriff's do not have any records. I have not asked the FBI if they have any records. There should be a report or a deposition somewhere, hopefully with photographs too. The Idaho statesman does not have the photographs and those articles are the only thing in the archives that the newspaper has from that. So the reporters have passed away. You know, the FBI is really my kind of only hope for that kind of thing. True. True. Because that would be the other way to stop without anybody knowing what you're doing. Yeah. If you're worried about the community, you say, you know, people ought to go for me. Well, and the other idea is that if he was armoring it with car parts, we'd find tons of car parts. No car parts, I found none. Back and forth, back and forth. No metal from cars. Oh, I do feel like the Boise National Forest bulldozed that thing. And after the whole shootout, I think they just got rid of the entire thing. And so the only thing I'm left with is, like, a site that's just an artifact scatter. Yeah. No, something you just said kind of got to this point. It's 80 years ago. So it's not impossible. There are still individuals alive in Boise who would have been old enough. Is there any, did you make any effort to sort of see if there are any informants and might recall this from their youth? I did and I couldn't find any, including individuals who were interviewed in a 1970, a 30-year renewal where a reporter spoke with people who's parents. So there's one specific guy, his dad wasn't a cop who went up there. And he told the whole account. I haven't been able to find any of those folks. It'd be past time. Is there another class in here? We got like two minutes, right? Or one minute? Great stuff. Yeah, thanks. One more question? I'll talk to you. Okay. Any feedback from the sheriff's department folks that you talked to in trying to get records or any member of the white community in terms of like the last matter sentiment? No. In Idaho you say something like shoot out. And they're just, holy cow. They started working overtime. No, they did spend some time trying to find those records. Talked with folks in the sheriff's office. They can't find them. I talked with folks in the police department. You know, they have, like I said, I started in 2014. They've been helping me all the way. And no one seems to be able to find these records. Well, the talk came before. No, I haven't filed it against or with anyone yet. All right. Yeah, thanks.