Article By Mike Tower 

President Theodore Roosevelt once refused to give a man a political patronage job until he had

gone back to school and received sufficient education to write a history of New Mexico without

mentioning Billy the Kid. Maybe Teddy should have included Oklahoma in his lecture as well, for

Oklahoma, too, has connections to the legend of Billy the Kid and the infamous Lincoln County War.

Fredrick Tecumseh Waite, Fred Waite, who truly went from Outlaw to Statesman, is Oklahoma’s

connection to the Billy the Kid legend. From the very first book on the Kid, writers have proclaimed

that Fred Waite was Billy’s best friend and tried to get the Kid to go straight and settle in Pauls Valley.

Just how true that is, is open to discussion. What is true is that Fred Waite in 1875 decided to strike

out on his own and announced his intention to go to Colorado. Instead, Fred, after narrowly avoiding

being strung up for a no good cattle rustler, found a job with the famous cattle baron, John Chisum. By

the fall of 1877, Fred was in Lincoln County, New Mexico, working for John Tunstall. Billy Bonney

did not start working for Tunstall until January, 1878. Tunstall was an ambitious Englishman who

planned on building an empire using the Desert Land Act. His plan was to claim homestead rights to as

many of the best sources of water as he could, thereby controlling all the surrounding grazing land. A

part of his scheme was for Fred Waite and Billy Bonney to prove up a ranch on the Rio Feliz,

southeast of Lincoln. Before this could happen, Tunstall, who had challenged the local business king

pins by setting up a competing store and bank, was murdered by a sheriff’s posse sent to attach

livestock as security for a law suit Tunstall’s business partner, Alexander McSween, was fighting. As

several members of an outlaw band had joined the sheriff’s posse and participated in the slaying of

Tunstall, the friends of Tunstall assumed the Sheriff was in on the plot to murder Tunstall. Fred, having

been assigned the task of driving a wagon loaded with trunks and stuffs, took a wagon road to Lincoln

while Tunstall and his men drove a small herd of horses cross country, and therefore, did not witness

the shooting of his friend and employer, John Tunstall. Fred heard about it the next day, and

accompanied Constable Martinez and Billy Bonney to the Murphy-Dolan store to make arrests of the

alleged killers. Upon entering the store, Sheriff Brady, who was surrounded by all the men who had

been in his posse, refused to assist the constable, and instead disarmed and arrested all three men.

Brady turned the constable free, but kept Waite and Bonney confined for 2 days, and thus, Fred did

not get to attend the funeral of Tunstall.

As one can image, Fred was very angry. First his friend and employer had been slay, and then he

had been prevented from going to pay his last respects. Both actions seemed to come from actions

initiated by Sheriff Brady, which probably explains some of what happened next. Within 2 months of

Tunstall’s death, two members of the sheriff’s posse, along with a man thought to be friendly with

them, were assassinated by a group of Tunstall’s friends who called themselves Regulators. Then, the

Sheriff and a deputy who had been a part of the posse which shot Tunstall, were ambushed and

murdered on the streets of Lincoln. Immediately after, one Buckshot Roberts, a member of the posse,

decided to turn bounty hunter and go after the reward the county had issued for the killers of Sheriff

Brady. Instead of becoming rich, Mr. Roberts became very dead, but not before single handedly

wounding four, and killing one of the Regulators. Fred Waite was very much a part of each of these

gun battles and was credited with killing the deputy accompanying Sheriff Brady. Fred also became the

subject of a county and two Federal murder warrants. Fred was officially an outlaw.

During the next 3 months, Fred participated in several scrimmages and at least two out right gun

battles. It’s not known if he killed anyone, but he was prominently present and did his part of the

fighting. During these months, Fred was being paid warrior’s wages, four dollars a day, at a time when

most cowboys earned a dollar a day. The money was being paid by Alexander McSween, John

Tunstall’s business partner.

Then, in July, Alexander McSween was forced to flee his burning home by the new sheriff and

posse, acting in concert with the U. S. Army, and shot to death when he emerged. This action signaled

an end to the Regulators, for without support, they could not continue. Therefore, they went to Fort

Sumner, in northeastern New Mexico and disbanded. The dissolution of the group was hastened when

Billy Bonney announced his candidacy for leadership and proposed they steal for a living. Only a hand

full stayed with Billy, Fred amongst them. Fred added rustling to his growing list of crimes committed

when the group hit several ranches of men who had supposedly supported the other side of the recent

war. The new rustlers haul was 125 head of horses which they took to the Texas panhandle town of

Tascosa, near present Amarillo, Texas. Several tales of old timers from the area mention Fred as being

prominent in Billy’s gang of horse thieves.

But, the truth is that most of the little group nominally led by Billy the Kid were just vacationing in

Texas. They had just spent eight months fighting pitched battles, eating and sleeping on the alert, and

never relaxing. The men were tired. So, mostly they just ate, drank, raced horses and attended the

local dances. After about 2 months, the boys had squandered all their money and worn out their

welcome. One by one the men drifted off to other pursuits. Fred, after unsuccessfully trying to get all of

them, Billy the Kid included, to come to Pauls Valley to live, said his good-byes and started for the

Washout River Valley.

Fred Waite belonged to the extended family of Paul, McClure, and Waite’s who settled the fertile

Washita River valley of South Central Oklahoma around 1859. His grand mother was the famed

Ela-techa, or Ellen Brown McClure Paul, beloved wife of Smith Paul, and mother of Sam Paul, on

whose land the Santa Fe’s Paul’s Valley depot was built. Fred was the first son of Thomas and

Catherine McClure Waite, and was born in 1854, at Fort Arbuckle, Indian Territory. His father,

Thomas, farmed and operated a trading store and stage stand southeast of present Pauls Valley.

Fred was no stranger to violence and death, even before his entry into the Lincoln County War.

During Fred’s early life he witnessed many a Comanche Indian raid on the settlers around Fort

Arbuckle. And, during the Civil War, Fred and his family, together with Tecumseh McClure, left the

Valley to refuge in the Sac and Fox Reserve located in eastern Kansas. While being chased by

Confederate soldiers, who were attempting to stop the family’s exodus, Fred’s maternal great uncle,

Ja-Pawne disappeared and was assumed killed.

Fred, within two years of his arrival home from Lincoln County, was charged with murder in the

shooting of an alleged horse thief, however, as Waite was part of a posse formed legally by his Uncle,

Sam Paul, the case was dropped by the Federal courts In the meanwhile, Fred married, started a

family, ranched, tried his hand as news paper editor, owned a back door saloon fronted by a drug

store, and entered tribal politics.

As a politician, Waite served as a U. S. Indian Policeman; was appointed a delegate to an

Inter-tribal conference where his performance so impressed Gov. Wm. Guy that he was invited to join

Guy’s political machine; was then elected as a Representative and Senator from his home district;

elected as Speaker of the House, by members of the House for 3 consecutive roll calls; elected as

Attorney General of the Chickasaw Nation and finally appointed by the Governor as National

Secretary for the Chickasaw Nation. Only Fred’s untimely death, from natural causes, in 1895

prevented Waite from being the Governor of the Chickasaw Nation. During his political career, Waite

was effective in delaying the dissolution of the Chickasaw Nation and statehood until the rights of his

people could be assured.

(Source: Fred Tecumseh Waite, Outlaw Statesman, by Mike Tower, the Chronicles of Oklahoma, Summer, 1998)

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