Historic Replicas

One of the most famous of all Wild West bounty hunters was Charlie Siringo, a bold and adventurous detective for the famous Pinkerton Agency in Chicago.  Born in 1855, Siringo worked from an early age as a cowboy in Texas, before relocating to Chicago and joining the agency in 1886.  In the course of a twenty-year career, Siringo traveled tens of thousands of miles, using his Western guns to track rustlers and bank robbers as far away as Alaska and Mexico City.  His tactics would have a lasting influence on modern detective work; he was one of the first enforcers to successfully work undercover.  He famously infiltrated Butch Cassidy’s gang of train robbers, and later the Western Federation of Miners in Idaho.  He gathered enough evidence to charge their secretary Big Bill Haywood with the murder of Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg. Siringo was initially a strong supporter of labor, but changed his tune after spending time in their inner circle, calling them bloodthirsty and dangerous. 

Bounty hunters aren’t often envisioned as heroes, but it is a testament to his character and commitment to justice that Siringo protected Haywood from a lynch mob after he was acquitted. Siringo immortalized himself in two books about his adventures, A Cowboy Detective and Further Adventures of a Cowboy Detective, and made the bounty hunter an indispensable part of American folklore and western replicas.