Lecture: Nate Champion & the Johnson County War
September 27 @ 5:30 pm - 7:30 pm MDT
Nate Champion & the Johnson County War of 1892
A Lecture & Slide Presentation by Mark Warren
Friday, September 27, 2024
5:30–7:30 p.m.
Join our McCracken Research Library and the Pahaska Corral of Westerners for an illustrated lecture and book signing by award-winning author and western historian Mark Warren, who presents Nate Champion and the Johnson County War, 1892. The event takes place Friday, September 27 in the Buffalo Bill Center of the West’s Kuyper Dining Pavilion. As a special addition, following the presentation, Mark performs his song, “Goodbye Boys, If I Never See You Again,” on the Center’s grand piano. Based on Nate Champion’s diary, the title comes from the last words written in those pages.
About the presentation
A young Texas cowhand travels to Wyoming to stake his claim as an independent rancher. Nate Champion finds himself thrown into the crucible of the Johnson County War. This program reveals one of America’s most egregious acts of insurrection and how one man prevented the crime of the century and became a martyr to the common laborer. Warren’s years of research reveal why Western scholars consider Nate Champion to be one of the unsung heroes of American history. Join us to find out what conditions were like in Wyoming in the late nineteenth century that turned Nate Champion into a martyr for the small independent ranchers of the West.
About the speaker
Mark Warren is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Georgia. At Medicine Bow, his nationally renowned wilderness school in the Southern Appalachians, he teaches nature classes and primitive survival skills. The National Wildlife Federation named him Georgia’s Conservation Educator of the Year in 1980. In 1998 Mark became the U.S. National Champion in whitewater canoeing, and in 1999 he won the World Championship Longbow title.
Mark has written extensively about nature for local and national magazines. He lectures on Native American history and survival skills, and Western frontier history presenting at museums and cultural centers around the country. He is a member of the Historical Novel Society, the Wild West History Association, and Western Writers of America. His Wyatt Earp, An American Odyssey trilogy was honored by WWA’s Spur Awards, the Historical Novel Society, and the 2020 Will Rogers Medallion Awards. Mark is a 2022 Georgia Author of the Year recipient for his book Song of the Horseman (Finalist, Literary Fiction). Indigo Heaven and The Westering Trail Travesties are Will Rogers Medallion Award winners.
Mark has 18 traditionally published books: from Lyons Press, Two Winters in a Tipi and Secrets of the Forest, from Two Dot, Wyatt Earp, An American Odyssey, from Speaking Volumes, Indigo Heaven, Song of the Horseman, Last of the Pistoleers, A Tale Twice Told, Moon of the White Tears, and A Copperhead Summer, and from Wolfpack, The Westering Trail Travesties, A Last Serenade for Billy Bonney, Nate Champion: The Texas Years, and Nate Champion: The Wyoming Years.
