INTRODUCTORY MATERIAL. Dedication, Table of Contents, List of Illustrations, List of Tables and a map of Skagway in July 1898, Acknowledgments, and a word about the illustrations.

INTRODUCTION. A discussion of the American Frontier Myth and the theme of “regeneration through violence;” a definition of “legend” as it pertains to myth; background information on Jefferson Randolph Smith and the legend of his death; and a outline of the following book.

PART ONE: AUTHENTICATION. The first part of the book is devoted to comparing the historic facts to the legend as it emerged.

CHAPTER 1. CONCEIVED IN LAWLESSNESS. Integral to the legend, indeed to the American Frontier Myth, is that Skagway (the Frontier) was lawless and chaotic, without law and order. This chapter explores primary historic documents to show how Skagway did indeed have an organized system of law and order several months before the legend gives it credit, and how little crime actually existed in the community. It discusses other communities of its size and composition from the time and gives similar crime statistics.

It then discusses the first event of any significance in the Smith legend, that of the murders of Ed McGrath and James Rowan, in which it is believed that Smith stopped the lynching of bartender Ed Fay. Using court records, contemporary newspaper reports, and early twentieth century interviews, it is shown that this portion of the legend is a later invention of journalists and friends of Soapy Smith, interested in giving him a larger role in the incident than he actually played.

CHAPTER 2. THE COMMITTEE OF 101. The author explores the origins of Skagway’s Committee of 101, a citizen’s committee established to adjudicate lands claims and establish a city government in the absence of a code of laws that could incorporate communities in Alaska. The Smith legend has long held that this organization arose in response to Smith, but it existed long before Smith became entrenched in the community, and had little to do with anything Smith and his colleagues were interested in. The author discusses similar committees and their functions throughout the west. Two issues were of paramount importance to the more permanent residents of Skagway in the winter of 1897-1898: obtaining clear deed to their property and the rights-of-way to the railroad and Brackett Wagon Road. The author demonstrates how these issues dominated both the news and the politics of the time and that no one could be said to be “king” of Skagway without being intimately involved in these issues.

Then, on May 1, 1898, the citizens of Skagway staged a Patriotic Parade, which has come down through legend as the inspiration of Soapy Smith. This chapter also discusses the journalists who reported the parade, their style of writing, and how they liked to make fun of the underworld. It also shows, for the first time, a photograph which clearly puts Smith at the end of the parade, instead of at the front, as the legend had him. Using diaries and newspaper articles, this chapter corrects many of the exaggerated and incorrect facts about Smith’s place in the festivities of July 4, 1898 and discusses why his role became so important in retrospect.

CHAPTER 3. A CON GONE WRONG. This chapter includes a rarely quoted first-hand account by miner John D. Steward, relating how his gold poke was stolen in Soapy Smith’s saloon. With the use of eye-witness accounts, the author reconstructs how the Committee of 101 was resurrected in the wake of the robbery of J.D. Stewart, and why it was that three different citizens’ meetings were called throughout the day following the robbery. These reasons had far more to do with the city council trying to appease the railroad company officials than it did with Smith and his cronies having any real power in the community. It includes a recapitulation of the shoot-out on Juneau Wharf, in which Soapy Smith and Frank Reid are each shot, as well as a dissection of the theory that there was a third shooter on the wharf.

CHAPTER 4. A LIE AGREED UPON. A discussion of why, in the minds of the middle-class merchants who made up the coroner’s jury, the Irish laborer Jesse Murphy could not have killed Soapy Smith. This is the beginning of the legend that Frank Reid killed Soapy Smith. An account of how Smith’s gang was captured after his death with reference to the first reports out of Skagway. This chapter also explores what became of Smith’s gang, both in legend and in fact.

PART  II. THE LEGEND. The second part of the book deals more with the legend and how it grew.

CHAPTER 5. THE LOCAL LEGEND. Reverend John A. Sinclair wrote Smith’s eulogy, which was published in the July 11, 1898 Skaguay News. This work and an article he wrote for The Toronto Globe set the stage for the morality play, in which the blood shed by a Sinner and a Martyr redeemed Skagway’s lawlessness. City engineer Harry Suydam followed with a magazine publication in 1901, which introduced the theme of the uncrowned king. The first booklet publication of the Smith legend was in 1907, by Chris Shea, running for Skagway mayor. He evoked the time of political chaos and lawlessness with his tongue-in-cheek satire, which is today taken for a history. It is in this cartoonish political statement that most of the elements of the legend first appear.

CHAPTER 6. THE JOURNALISTS AND MEMOIRS. Journalists outside Alaska and the North started publishing the legend as early as 1908, emphasizing the redemption story. This chapter examines the early accounts of Don Steffa (1908), Will Irwin (1909), and Barkalow Barnacle (1920). Other early versions of the Smith legend came out in the memoirs of Samuel Graves (1908), Samuel Steele (1915), and Fenton B. Whiting (1933), all of whom contributed their own, biased versions of the legend.

CHAPTER 7. SKAGWAY TOURISM. Tourism capitalists Harriet Pullen and Martin Itjen in Skagway during the 1930’s furthered the legend by either putting themselves in it or elaborating on the story. While Itjen tried to explain away the second killer, he was unsuccessful in doing so in the face of the hold the legend had taken. Both published their versions of the story.  The Smith legend took to the stage, where the increasingly symbolic story has been performed daily during summer months since the 1920’s.

CHAPTER 8. A LITERARY LEGEND. In 1927, the legend became further convoluted by a Denver journalist who remembered dining with Smith and Richard Harding Davis in Washington, D.C. The stories that grew from his versions took strange forms. By the 1930’s, novelists, journalists and literary figures took the story and elaborated more on it. Full-length biographies were written; nationally-known writers purported to find fresh material on Smith; and literary writers compared him to Robin Hood. By the late 1950’s, Canadian author, Pierre Berton enshrined the Smith legend as a permanent part of the Klondike lore. Modern versions, including the latest biographies by Jane Haigh, Jeff Smith, and Howard Blum are examined. 
 

CHAPTER 9. LEGEND, LEGACY AND HERITAGE.  The author discusses the characteristics of the legendary hero, as defined by Dixon Wector, John Lash, Kent Steckmesser, Richard Slatter, and Orrin Klapp. She compares this hero to the American folklores of Wild Bill Hickok, the Earp Brothers, Billy the Kid, and Jesse James, and then discusses how Soapy Smith’s legend compares to these legendary figures. She comments on how Smith’s legend has evolved from one of the martyred hero Reid to one of the Clever Trickster Smith. She concludes that it is important to recognized and understand the discrete places of mythology, legend and history in a community’s heritage. Recognizing the difference between legend and historic fact is important in understanding social process and interpretation of events. It is important to place Smith and other legendary hero figures like him –– in the realm of folklore and not confuse it with history.

APPENDIX A: CHRONOLOGICAL LISTING OF SOAPY SMITH ACCOUNTS

APPENDIX B: "SOAPY SMITH'S LAST BLUFF AND IT'S FATAL ENDING" BY E.J. WHITE.

END NOTES.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. 

INDEX.

ONE TABLE: Number of Businesses that Advertised The Skaguay News between October 15 and December 31, 1897.

 TOTAL PAGES: 29 historic photographs; 8 original drawings; 3 maps; 1 political cartoon from historic newspaper. 305 pages, before index.