Little Slaughterhouse on the Prairie (Bloodlands collection)

by Harold Schechter

There was the awful instance of “the family of children found frozen in the terrible blizzard of Plum Creek.”

Benders stand as their evil alter egos: embodiments of the lawlessness, savagery, and ever-present threat of sudden, violent death. The dark side of the frontier experience. During Wilder’s childhood, the Bender tavern came to be known by a variety of Gothic-horror epithets: the Devil’s Inn, the Devil’s Kitchen, Hell’s Half-Acre. More recently, some waggish crime historians have branded it with a different name: The Little Slaughterhouse on the Prairie.

Labette County owes its historical significance not to the cultural or scientific or political accomplishments of any of its inhabitants, but to the homicidal monsters who lived there and made it their killing ground.

Outlawry and violence are deeply rooted in the history of Kansas. During the pre–Civil War years, clashes between pro- and anti-slavery forces reached such a savage pitch that the territory became known as “Bleeding Kansas.”

Dodge City, on the High Plains of Kansas, earned a reputation as “the wickedest town in the west”—“a synonym for all that is wild, reckless, and violent; Hell on the plains,” as one contemporary newspaper put it.

1862 Homestead Act: 160 acres of public land, free and clear after five years of residency.

Her face wasn’t so bad featured, but her hair was long and seldom combed. She had a wild look that was scary. I don’t think she ever took a bath, and there were creases in her neck filled with dirt. She had the body of a cow. As for sex attraction, she would’ve had to pay the most forlorn cowboy who hadn’t seen a woman in a year to get near her.[17] Tintype

In early April, seventy-five men from Osage Township—Pa Bender and John Jr. among them—gathered for an emergency meeting at the local schoolhouse to discuss the rash of mysterious disappearances afflicting Labette County—now numbering eleven.

Most shocking of all, however, was the condition of George Longcohr’s eighteen-month-old daughter. Tossed in the grave alongside her father, she was found fully clothed without a mark of violence on her. The coroner concluded that the infant had been buried alive.[39]