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Beaman told Eaton that when he was good enough to shoot the head off a snake with either hand that he’ d buy Eaton another gun. The boy took the challenge and learned to shoot with both hands – which was an amazing feat, Wise said, because Eaton had a lazy eye and couldn’ t look down the barrel to aim. He’ d pull out his gun and fire from the hip.
justice.’ Not many of them survived.”
Wise described how one night, six former Confederates rode up in front of Eaton’ s cabin and shot his dad down in front of him. One of them got off his horse and took a horse whip and beat Eaton with it a little bit, Wise said.
Shortly after the shooting, neighbor and ex-gun fighter Mose Beaman brought Eaton his first gun, an old Navy black powder revolver with an 8-inch barrel.
“ He showed my grandfather how to make those bullets and load the gun and fire it,” Wise said.“ And he told the boy,‘ May an old man’ s curse rest on your head the rest of your life if you don’ t avenge these killings.’ So, this 8-year-old boy was being told it was his job to do this because no one else was going to, and he thought he had it to do.”
Beaman told Eaton that when he was good enough to shoot the head off a snake with either hand that he’ d buy Eaton another gun. The boy took the challenge and learned to shoot with both hands – which was an amazing feat, Wise said, because Eaton had a lazy eye and couldn’ t look down the barrel to aim. He’ d pull out his gun and fire from the hip.
“ He said it was just like pointing your fingers, and he was very good at it,” Wise said.“ There are still people alive who have seen him shoot. He could shoot every bit as well as what they said he could.”
When he was 15 years old, Eaton went to Ft. Gibson( which was still known as Indian Territory at the time) to see if he was good enough with his gun to hunt his father’ s killers. Some of the U. S. Army’ s best sharpshooters were no match for him.
“ He outshot all the officers at Ft. Gibson,” Wise said.“ The commanding officer,( Col. John Joseph Coppinger), came out and told him,‘ Well, from now on, your name’ s going to be Pistol Pete.’”
Eaton tried to join the U. S. Calvary so he could avenge his father’ s killers, but because of his age was denied the chance. Two years later, he finally became a U. S. Marshal and by the time he was in his mid-20s, he had found and killed five of the men responsible for his father’ s murder. The sixth man was killed by someone else for cheating in a card game the night before Eaton arrived in town.
“ Now, there’ s a lot of questions about that. There’ s always questions about the figures of the Old West,” Wise said.“ We can’ t prove a lot of it, we can’ t prove a lot of his story. We do know some of it’ s true. We do know that he was there in the time that he said he was there, and he knew the people he said that he knew. But there’ s no absolute written proof yet that he was a U. S. Marshal.”
Wise said he was definitely a U. S. Marshal for the U. S. Cattlemen’ s Association, and he worked in Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri, Kansas and New Mexico tracking cattle rustlers.
He married Orpha Miller and had two daughters. Orpha died in the late 1890s, and in the early 1900s he met and married his second wife, Anna Rosetta Silllix. Together they raised Eaton’ s two daughters and another eight children of their own.
After his time as a lawman, Eaton joined the land rush to Oklahoma Territory and found a spot on the Cimarron River near Perkins, where he settled and became a blacksmith. He became a charter member of the Cherokee Strip Cowpunchers Association. Everywhere he went in Oklahoma, he rode a horse.
Wise said his grandfather had a sense of humor and liked kidding people. He was also known for telling stories at his blacksmith shop, handing out lollipops to children, hosting visitors from other countries, teaching bison to play with tennis balls and playing his fiddle.
Becoming a mascot
Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College’ s original mascot was a tiger, based on students’ ties to a beloved professor, Harry Thompson, whose father had attended Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey. For a time, OSU was known as the“ Princeton of the Prairies.”
Frank Eaton, aka, Pistol Pete
A young Frank Eaton. / PHOTOS PROVIDED
Pistol Pete, 1976( OSU Photograph Collection, OSU Archives, OSU Libraries)
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