Historians Go to the Wars to Teach Truth About America’s Western Expansion Era

Outside his tepee, Jim Morgan, who is part Cherokee and lives in Garden Grove, was explaining his weekend life as an Indian while Bruce Watson of Seal Beach, garbed in mountain man clothes, was shooting off his black powder rifle during a gathering in Idyllwild.

You’d swear Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone had popped out of the forest and time had reverted to the 1800s.

“That’s the life we lead when we have a rendezvous,” said Watson, president of the Anaheim-based Golden Bears, a group of about 200 Orange County historians bent on living the life they study as well as telling others what they call “the true” historical facts of that era called the Western Expansion.

Many of the mountain men of that era were runaways from the military, Europeans who jumped ship as well as indentured servants who formed the nucleus of the free spirit in the United States, said Theresa MacWillie, one of several women in the Golden Bears.

“Those people learned from the Indians how to survive,” said MacWillie, “by making their own clothing and hunting for food to eat and gathering furs to trade. That’s why they were called ‘free trappers.’ ”

Watson said the group “is more like an extended family learning self-reliance and survival in the woods where breathing is easier and you learn the way of the early mountain man.” He notes that it also teaches tolerance of one another, “something we take home with us.”

What they hope stays behind with campers and other weekend visitors who listen to their historical talks are the arts and crafts they make and sell from the campgrounds, one method of raising money, they say, to continue their rugged life style and historical education to others.

The Golden Bears also plan a free Indian and mountain men crafts show in the less rugged surroundings of Hobby City in Anaheim on Nov. 9 and 10.

The event will include tomahawk- and knife-throwing demonstrations as well as re-creations of military camps of the French and Indian War, the Indian wars and the war between the states. Everyone will be costumed in clothes of that era.

When Dan Baker of Fullerton heard that Baylor University was coming to town to play USC in football, he invited Judge Grady to stay at his company’s Buena Park Travelers Inn and stocked it with Brady’s favorite snacks--Oreo cookies, Dr Pepper and dog food.

Everything turned out just dandy for Baylor, which beat the Trojans, and for Brady, a 2-year-old, 150-pound docile black bear who strutted on the football field as the Baylor mascot. Later that night he retired to his room with trainer David Kipp, who was not available to comment on who got the bed.

And Baker, a Baylor University alumnus, said that hosting a bear was not that big a deal. “Travelers Inn is used to unusual guests. . . .”

It was quite a grind for Lanell Henson, 16, and Robert Gaynor, 18, both Fountain Valley neighbors and longtime friends, when they became one of six finalists in Dick Clark’s American Bandstand televised dance contest.

They competed 10 times with 10 different routines and 10 costume changes, all as cheerleaders, a role they actually perform in school.

“It took a lot of dedication and practice,” Lanell said. “We worked so hard to get there and then we practiced every day for 10 weeks. It just about eliminated our social life, but it was something we both wanted to do,” she said, noting that another big incentive was the grand prize of two new cars.

They finished in third place.

Roy Brehm, Boyd Diaz and Joyce Belanger spent a fantasy working life at Disneyland, so when they retired there 30 years to the day after the park opened in 1955, they were given a special parting fantasy gift . . . a name tag with a set of golden mouse ears that gives them free lifetime admission to the park.