Bone Mizell: Cracker Cowboy of the Palmetto Prairies

 | Wild West  | 0 comments  | Print This Post  | Email This Post

If there was a touch of hyperbole in these descriptions, it’s probably due to Bone’s encouragement. At one time or another, our peripatetic hero cowboyed for three of Florida’s top cattle barons. Judge Ziba King had the largest spread, running 50,000 head of beef worth $500,000. King thought so highly of Bone that he several times made him his top wrangler and foreman.

King recognized that even though Bone couldn’t read, write or do sums, he was far from being just a simple-minded cowboy. The wily old cattle baron counted on Bone’s fabulous memory to carry him through, while fully realizing Bone was also a drifter and a grifter.

Only once did Bone stray from his cowboy trade. He tried being a merchant, opening a grocery store in his old hometown. The venture was successful for a time, or for as long as customers paid cash. If the customer was broke, Bone extended them credit, making a long black mark on a wall. The mark indicated that some one owed Bone some amount for some item. But then came the day when even his famous memory left him totally bemused. He’d let so many black marks accumulate on the wall, he could no longer remember who owed him, for what they owed him, or for how much. He promptly gave away the rest of his stock, closed up shop and went back to cow hunting.

Logan King, grandson of Ziba King, recounted to Tinsley in 1979 another story about Bone’s lack of education. Bone and some other cowboys were driving a herd to Tampa one day when Bone’s horse gave out. Bone decided he would trade horses with an elderly black man plowing nearby, and the other cowboys told Bone he would have to give the farmer cash because the plow horse looked better than Bone’s mount, Marsh Tackie.

Bone, though, went right over to the farmer, scribbled something on a piece of paper and then exchanged horses. Bone rode back to the other cowboys on his new horse, and they asked him how he had made the deal without any money. ‘Well, I give him a promissory note,’ Bone explained. ‘Bone you know you can’t write,’ replied one of the cowboys. ‘Hell, boys, he couldn’t either.’

By all accounts, Bone was openly boastful about his talents with a branding iron and bottle of booze. He never hesitated to use the one ability to finance the other affliction. Court records of the era indicate that larceny was an innate part of Bone’s nature.

In addition to the cattle-stealing incident involving the judge, Bone was arrested many other times for rustling and brand altering–which makes it all the more remarkable that he was convicted only once. That happened in early 1895 when Bone decided it again was time to drive a rustled herd to Arcadia to cure his whammies.

Bone was arrested there for brand altering. It was a dirty, broke, hung-over wrangler who appeared before a judge on March 15, 1895. What’s more, Bone didn’t have any blackmail with which to threaten this judge. But down and out as he looked, he was still nonchalant in demeanor when he pleaded not guilty. Bone was convinced the good folks of Arcadia were not about to let him languish in some prison cell. After all, wasn’t he Arcadia’s favorite cowboy; wasn’t that artist feller Remington going to make him famous with a painting in a big time magazine up north?

Surely it was his prairie peccadilloes that had put Arcadia on the map in the first place–just as Billy the Kid’s exploits had made Lincoln, New Mexico, famous. Besides, DeSoto County officials always went out of their way to get Bone off. No, ol’ Bone wasn’t too worried.

In a way, he was right not to fret. It was three years before this case, and a couple of others, were finally settled. However, his situation did grow a bit more dicey a year later when he was arrested for rustling in neighboring Lee County. Now he did worry ’cause Lee County wasn’t his bailiwick.

During this trial in the Lee County Courthouse, several DeSoto County friends attempted to tamper with the jury’s deliberations. They threw a rock through an open window into the jury room with a rope attached. On the other end was a basket containing good food and good whiskey. It didn’t help a whit. The jury found Bone guilty of rustling on March 2, 1896, and he was sentenced to two years’ hard labor in the state pen.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to

Tags: Historical Figures, People, The Wild West, Wild West