CALIFORNIA JOE

GREAT SCOUT AND PLAINSMAN

- JOSEPH G. ROSA

“Who was California Joe?” asked J.W. Buel in his Heroes of the Plains published in 1882, for Joe’s origin was as much a mystery to his contemporaries as it was for many who came later. Some claimed his name was Joseph Milner (favored by Buffalo Bill Cody) or Joseph Hawkins, and others claimed that he was Truman Head, the famous “California Joe” of Col. Hiram Berdan’s Civil War Sharpshooters. Even Custer admitted that he did not know Joe’s real name, for “no other name seemed ever to have been given him, and no other name ever seemed necessary.”

His Christian name was not Joe at all, but Moses Embree Milner, and he was born in Stanford, Kentucky, on May 8, 1829. A born wanderer, “Joe” spent time in California and Oregon, where he first met “Little Phil,” better known as Gen. Philip H. Sheridan. However, Joe stopped wandering long enough to marry Nancy Emma Watts on his 21st birthday, May 8, 1850. He and his bride went first to California and then to Oregon, where he built a home in Corvallis. The couple had four sons, though Joe was rarely around.

By 1866, Joe was in Kansas. Military records of his activities are sparse, not helped by the discrepancies in his name. Between September 1868 and April 1869, he was a scout attached to Fort Harker, but there is some evidence that he was at Fort Riley in 1866-67, where he probably first met Wild Bill Hickok. Old-timers recalled that Joe was one of the great rifle shots of the Plains, whereas Wild Bill was noted for his skill with a pistol. Had they both been as adept as each other with pistol and rifle, they would have been truly formidable!