Belle Star

Let's speak about a kind of people that were very famous during the Conquest of the Wild West: the outlaws. We have to think that in those days law was a very relative matter and women must have been very brave. Belle Star, "The bandit Queen", was born in 1848 around Carthage Missouri. She knew Jesse James and got married four times living as a bandit. Her marriage to bandit Jim Reed was said to have been performed on horseback, not by a priest, but by another member of the gang. Her third husband, Sam Starr was a Cherokee Indian and the fourth one was a Creek Indian. She was wanted by the law and the newspapers made her legend grow by exagerating her acts. She was compared to Robin Hood.She has been credited with stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, playing crooked poker games with her six-shooters, and galloping down city streets with pistols blazing. Riding home in 1889 Belle was shot. Her tombstone reads "Shed not for her the bitter tear, Nor give the heart to vain regret, 'Tis but the casket that lies here, The gem that fills it sparkles yet."