History

The man who would become Cassius Boone was born on a plantation in south-east Louisiana, close to New Orleans. The third son of locally famous horse breeders, Amos Thibideaux had a charmed childhood. He learned to ride almost as soon as he could walk, and though his eldest brother was set to inherit the plantation, he always expected to live on the property with his inevitable, eventual wife and train horses while raising his own family.

Instead, when he was 15, the rising tensions between the North and the South (between the slavers, like his father, and the abolitionists) erupted into the Civil War. Amos, his two brothers, and his father all left home to join the fight as officers in the Confederate cavalry. While Amos proved a deft rider and a dependable young officer, the war ill-agreed with his generally easy-going nature. There was no other option open to him, however; his father had made it obvious that to return home would be to have no home to return to.

Things took a turn for the worse in 1864. Amos, his father, and his brothers were present for the First Battle of Saltville, and were witness to the treatment of the black cavalrymen there. That alone ruined Amos' little remaining appetite for the war; a week later, when his brother Leland was killed at the Battle of Tom's Brook, their father completely fell apart. He blamed Amos for Leland's death, and beat him severely. To the CO he claimed that Amos had been attempting to desert, and for that Amos was also flogged.

In very poor health, Amos was sent to the nearest field hospital under guard. He was still recovering from the flogging he had received when Sheridan took the valley from Confederate forces, and was made a prisoner of the Union army until the end of the war, some seven or so months later.

After the war, Amos' father never forgave him for 'killing' his brother. Though he stopped short of disowning him and sending him away (only because of intervention on the part of his mother), Buchanan Thibideaux made no secret of his hatred for his youngest son. The loss of Leland, and the loss of the South in the war, completely broke the man, and he lost himself to his anger and drink.

During his captivity by the Union army, Amos had been able to make friends of a sort with some of his captors. In spite of the otherwise horrific conditions he had been subjected to as a POW, including but not limited to the reprisal killing of some of his peers and enlisted men, and the occasional beating, he lasted only a few months living as a pariah at his family's plantation before applying to and being accepted into the US Army's officer program at the age of 19. He attended West Point, received a real officer's education, and was assigned to the land that would become Fort Sill, in Indian Territory. It was there that he met a Comanche woman, fell in love, married, and had two children.

Topʉsana was a headstrong and proud woman, and was reluctant to stay on the reservation that had been set aside for her people. In 1874, after weeks of his wife's urging, Amos resigned his commission and traveled with her and her family northwest to Colorado Territory. Under the false identity of Cassius Boone (due to otherwise being ineligible to receive land from the Homesteading Act), he received 160 acres near the Colorado Rockies and bought a large parcel of land with his savings to provide land to his wife's family to live upon. There they began building a new life for themselves, and lived happily, if largely simply, for six years. Then, while Amos was away to the nearest town, their home was attacked, resulting in the death of his wife, their 10 year old son, and several of his in-laws.

Completely unprepared to care for his young daughter alone, heartbroken by the loss of his wife and son, and with most of his wife's band scattered or dead, Amos buried his wife in the foothills of the Rockies, abandoned their home, and returned home to Louisiana with his daughter. His father had died in 1872, having never forgiven Amos; his mother welcomed him warmly, though she was not entirely pleased to see the mixed-race child he returned home with. In the end, Amos couldn't stomach a life at home, and left his daughter (who at 9 years old already reminded him too much of his wife) to be raised by his mother and sisters-in-law.

For the next five years or so, he traveled the West as Cassius Boone, making money in any way he could. He worked alternatively as a cowhand, horse trainer, laying railroad... Anything to earn enough to keep himself numb with alcohol. It was happenstance more than anything that he was brought onto Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. He could shoot, ride, and rope... When he was sober, or close to it, anyway. For that he was kept on in spite of his drunkenness sometimes causing problems.

When the show went to the UK for the queen's Jubilee, a falling out with some of the show's management over Cash's drunken antics resulted in him being left in London when the rest of the show continued on. Over the summer he stayed in a boarding house, making money any way he could, continuing his trend of drinking himself into numbness.

Only recently has he began to pull himself from his wallowing depression; whether he'll stick to it and make a respectable man of himself again remains to be seen.