this is an article i found online tonight and thougth i might share it. I found it very interesting!


When it comes to female outlaws in the Old West, none can compare to a Butch-Femme cattle thieving couple from the Indian Nation of Oklahoma. Little Annie and Cattle Britches rode into legend with and without their outlaw pals at their sides. They only flourished for a couple of short years on the bandit trails before they were caught, but they had a damned fine time.. Maybe it is because little is known about what happened to them later in life. Whatever the reason, Cattle Annie and Little Britches have been mostly forgotten in the annals of western lore, but not in the Oklahoma and Indian Territories. Here, they were two of the best known names in outlaw history. And dykes they were!


In the days of Bill Doolin and his Wild Bunch, lawmen also had their hands full trying to put a stop to the message carriers who would warn gang members when Johnny Law was in the vicinity. Around Pawnee and Perry, Oklahoma, two of these spies were also wanted for selling liquor to the Indians and for horse theft. They were crack shots with either pistol or rifle, and in spite of their youth, or perhaps because of it, they managed to elude the law just about everywhere they turned up. It was hard to imagine girls on the wrong side of justice, especially teenagers, but the truth is that two of the cutest and youngest outlaw spies ever to ride the bandit trails were Cattle Annie and Little Britches.


Anna McDoulet was born in 1879 to James C. and Rebekah McDoulet of Lawrence County, Kansas. She had an older brother named Calvin and an older sister named Martha, and at the time she went to prison as Cattle Annie, her siblings also included Claude, Maud, Everett, George, James, and John, all younger than herself and all still living at home.


When Anna was four years old, her family moved south to Coyville, Kansas, not Coffeyville, as some sources claim. Some accounts say her father was a lawyer turned preacher, moving around spreading the word of the Gospel, while others claim he was uneducated and dirt poor. All agree that he was honest and respectable. To help make ends meet, Annie went to work as a dishwasher in a hotel. She also did domestic help and any other odd sort of chores whenever she could. When she was twelve, the family moved to the Cherokee Nation, where she studied in the Mission School by day and worked in a restaurant at night. Two years later, the family moved to the Otoe Reservation near Skiatook, just north of Tulsa. It was here that her nefarious days apparently began.


Jennie Stevens was born in 1879 to Daniel and Lucy Stevenson of Barton County, Missouri. She had one sister named Victoria Estella, and there may possibly have been more siblings. The first eight years of her life were spent in Missouri. Most accounts agree that her parents were uneducated and poor, but they were honest and respectable, earning a living by farming and raising produce for the surrounding area. Along about 1887, they moved west to Seneca on the Missouri border, the outer fringes of Indian Territory, where they lived for one year before moving further west into the Creek Nation at Sinnett in the southeast corner of Pawnee County.


Jennie became enthralled with the stories she heard of the notorious Doolin Gang when she was barely fifteen-years-old. When she could stand it no longer, she donned men's clothing, and on her first night out, lost her horse and ended up being dropped at a neighbor's by the gang, whereby she had no recourse but to return home to face her angry father. He gave her a sound thrashing, and together with the taunts of her friends, it was more than she could stand. She ran away to hook up with a deaf-mute horse dealer named Benjamin Midkiff, whom she married in Newkirk on 5 March 1895, setting up housekeeping in a hotel in Perry. Six weeks later, after discovering she was entertaining men while he was gone, Midkiff returned her to her father, and almost the next day she started her dishonorable rides up and down the Arkansas River.


By the time she was sixteen, Jennie was reported to have married Robert Stephens, whom she left after six months. Whatever her marital relationship, she rode to prison as Jennie Midkiff and into history as Jennie Stevens, the infamous "Little Britches."


It was the custom in those days to hold country dances whenever the whim and work conditions allowed, and people from miles around in all directions would show up for the occasion. It was here, living practically in the same neighborhood, that the two girls met each other and formed a fast friendship. At one such dance, Annie and Jennie met members of the Doolin Gang. At that time, the Wild Bunch had a hideout in the Creek Nation Cave on the Cimarron River, not too far from Ingalls, a small town east of Stillwater, which would become infamous in 1893 for a gang shootout which would leave three marshals dead.


Annie went to the dance with a local boyfriend, and he introduced her to George "Red Buck" Waightman. When Annie learned that her new acquaintance was a member of Doolin's notorious Wild Bunch, she fell madly in love with him immediately. There is little doubt that the outlaw tales of the Doolin-Dalton Gang made Red Buck, whom so many deputy marshals hunted, appear larger-than-life for the farm girl. The same romanticism for the bandits can also be said for Jennie.


It was a common and accepted practice to offer hospitality to anyone who happened to ride up to a farm or ranch house, and if the stranger happened to be an outlaw on the run, he was still treated courteously. Both girls listened to the long and exciting tales of brushes with the law, while sewing up the bullet holes in the clothes after the bandits came in from their raids. It was a wild and exciting time for the girls, and several months after meeting up with the Wild Bunch, they decided to begin their own career of outlawry. According to one newspaper account, "not only did they dare to wear men's pants in the sanctimonious but scarlet nineties, but rode horses as men rode them, astride, and with heavy forty-fives swinging at their hips."


Both girls thrived in the danger that went with being on the wrong side of the law. By dressing in men's clothing, they could confuse the posses, and with bandits for pals, they easily learned how to ride and shoot with the best of them. Throughout 1895, they made newspaper headlines throughout the Twin Territories from Guthrie to Coffeyville, a big chunk of territory. Their prime interests lay in peddling whiskey in the Osage and Pawnee Indians, with a hefty dose of horse theft tossed in for good measure, but they never failed to keep their ears and eyes open to the interests of the gang members. They worked together or alone and sometimes with others, often working domestic chores by day and banditry at night, throwing confusion to the lawmen determined to capture them. Once in eastern Payne County, a posse met Cattle Annie on the trail. Questioned about the "passing of strange men," the girl gave evasive and unsatisfactory answers, but her identity was not known, and she was allowed to go. She immediately sent a message to the Doolin Gang's hiding place that the law was near, and the outlaws "vanished from the district."


In mid-August 1895, Jennie was arrested. It was Sunday evening on the 18 th , and Sheriff Frank Lake took her to a restaurant in Pawnee for supper. A guard was placed at the door, but when Jennie finished eating, she darted out the back door, ripped of her dress, seized a horse and absconded into the night. Several officers were instantly in pursuit, but she escaped, and the papers the next morning had a field day with news of Jennie riding out "…on the horse [stolen] from a deputy marshal [Frank M. Canton] who had arrested her for selling whiskey to the Indians." It was prime fodder for her legend.


The following night, Annie and Jennie were tracked down near Pawnee by Marshals Bill Tilghman and Steve Burke. Burke ran around the house and remained outside, while Tilghman charged inside. Both girls gave fight, and several shots rang out, as the girls made their way to a back window to escape. Cattle Annie was caught by Burke, as she climbed out the window, and was wrestled to the ground, but Little Britches escaped and gave the officers a long chase. She fired over her shoulder at them, only her aim was not good, and her shots missed. Tilghman finally shot her horse, and horse and rider crashed to the ground. Although she fought wildly, Jennie was finally subdued, and both girls were taken to jail.


Annie and Jennie were tried before Judge Andrew G. Curtain Bierer of the Fourth Judicial District of Oklahoma Territory on the charge of stealing horses and peddling spirits to the Indians. Annie received a one year sentence, was delivered on 4 September 1895 to the Framingham reformatory for women in Massachusetts, and was paroled a few months later, due to poor health. She refused to go home, saying she would return to her life of crime, and remained at Framingham until she could procure work as a domestic. On 18 April 1898, she went to work for Mrs. Mary Daniels in Sherborn, just south of Framingham. A few months later, she went to New York, where some stories claim she died of consumption in Bellevue Hospital. Other stories claim Annie returned to Oklahoma and married Earl Frost of Perry in 1901, had two children, and divorced Frost in 1909. Information in the museum in Guthrie, Oklahoma claims she married second to J. W. Roach of Oklahoma City and died in 1978. An even stranger tale, which has achieved legend, has her returning to Oklahoma, marrying twice before marrying Jack Dalton, settling down to life in Purcell as Anna Ohme Burke Dalton. The truth may never be known.


Jennie was held for two months in the Guthrie jail, the territorial capital of Oklahoma, as a material witness in a murder trial. She had been working as a domestic in a home where she had witnessed a man shoot another. Her two-year penal sentence began in Framingham reformatory in Massachusetts on 11 November 1895, and she was discharged on 7 October 1896 for good behavior. She returned to her parents in Sinnett, Oklahoma Territory. What finally happened to Jennie is a mystery. There are a variety of stories that claim she married, settled down, and raised a family, living an exemplary life in Tulsa, but none of these stories ever gives any times, places, or names.


Cattle Annie and Little Britches rode the outlaw trails for two short years, but it was two years which gave the marshals and peace officers in the Twin Territories no end of trouble.

Thanks for posting this interesting article. Can I ask where you found it, or who wrote it, in case I might want to cite it?

--meursault