Sept. 15, 2011 - Unlike other horse thieves, Henry Born -- often called Dutch Henry or, in some quarters, Dutch Yenry -- lived a much longer life than others of his ilk. Most people in his business ended up hanging from a tree or shot dead before any questions could be asked or answered. A rattlesnake in camp had better prospects for survival than a horse thief.
Not only did Dutch Henry get out of the business with his hide intact, his reputation didn't suffer the slings and arrows -- and nooses -- of his fellow horse thieves. The long life had mostly to do with him believing certain people who said they would kill him if he ever stole one or more horses from them and from a couple of fortuitous decisions. The reputation of Henry Born as something of an Old West Robin Hood had mostly to do with a story often told but often disputed.
According to the story, Henry Born was just a hard working buffalo hunter out on the Plains. He worked as a cook and saved his money which he used to buy a team and wagon and hire a helper. His plan was to make his money in the hide business and then go back to his home in Michigan and marry his sweetheart. One day a group of Cheyenne warriors attacked the camp. Born and his partner survived but both were wounded and without horses.
Born, who had been shot in the foot with an arrow, limped to Fort Lyon and asked the commander if he could borrow a team in order to bring in his buffalo hides. The commander had enjoyed about all he could stand of the hunters and hide men and so he not only refused to supply a team he threatened to have Born arrested if he didn't go away.
Dutch Henry's life of crime started that night. He hid until dark and then stole a bunch of Army mules and the commander's horse and away rode. He always swore that he stole only Indian horses and Army mules, which appealed to the buffalo hunters who also didn't like the natives or the Army.
Born was a scout very briefly for George Armstrong Custer's Seventh Cavalry, but he quit because Custer was "the meanest man I ever knew." Considering some of the hombres that Born hung out with, that's saying something. The decision to leave the Seventh Cavalry also helped prolong his life.
Aside from his horse thieving, Dutch Henry is also known as a member of the band of hunters and skinners who held off a determined attack by Quanah Parker's Comanches at Adobe Walls. With him at the battle was the soon-to-be-legendary gambler and lawman, Bat Masterson, whose path would later cross with Born's again.
Dutch Henry essentially ran an organized crime syndicate that ranged over parts of several states and according to detective Charles Sirringo included as many as 300 men. When Charles Goodnight set up the JA Ranch in the Panhandle he made a deal with Dutch Henry.
"I am settling on the upper Red River and am trying to make it a peaceful and lawful country," Goodnight told the outlaw. "I much prefer to have no trouble with anyone, and I want an understanding with you. If you depredate in that country, we will have to clash. I have a bunch of good men, well-armed and good shots, but I dislike to be compelled to use them that way. I would like to divide territories with you. If you keep out of my part of the country, I will never cross the Salt Fork."
That suited Dutch Henry just fine and the two mean sealed the deal with a drink. The two men never crossed paths again.
Later, Born was arrested at Trinidad, Colo. and was tried for stealing mules. The Trinidad paper described Born as "a rather genteel-looking man for a horse thief, road agent and murderer." Bat Masterson showed up and hauled Dutch Henry to Dodge City as a fugitive from justice but, much to Masterson's chagrin, Born was acquitted.
Still, there was something about an unfinished prison term in Arkansas, and so Dutch Henry was arrested again and sent there to finish the term. He explained that he had left the prison because he had permission to look for a shovel and had been all over the country looking for one without success.
At the end of his time in prison Born declared that he was "even with the Indians and the government" and was "ready to smoke the pipe of peace and bury the hatchet." Unlike others who made such declarations and then buried the hatchet in the back of somebody's head, Dutch Henry actually went straight. He did a little mining in Colorado and set up at a place known as Born's Lake. He married in 1900 and fathered four children and rarely talked about his days on the outlaw trail. He died in 1921, and is buried at Pagosa Springs in Colorado.
