About The Author

Dan Smith, an alumnus of Boston University, has been a teacher, coach, and for twenty five years a high school assistant principal.  he has also worked as a truck driver, hodcarrier, carpenter and common laborer.  He is fluent in several languages and enjoys reading, research, music, weightlifting, handball and target shooting at a gun club near his home in Massachusetts.

Smith's lifelong ambition is writing.  He attributes his desire to write and any talent he brings to the craft to his parents, especially on his mother's side:  Smith's maternal grandfather was George Reginald Margetson, a Poet Laureate, whose substantial works are included in the libraries of many of our most prestigious universities.

Dan Smith published his first novel, A Walk In The City, in 1971: a contemporary story of Black youth.  Long interested in the American frontier, his current ambition is to write novels of th Old West, stories that include Black men and woman in a true historical perspective of the frontier life.

 

Johnny Buffalo: A Novel
(Click to order via Amazon

Format: Paperback, 183pp. 
ISBN: 1563152037 
Publisher: SterlingHouse Publishers 
Pub. Date: August 1999

Johnny Buffalo was chosen for the CWMYB Online Book Club's Reading list (Reading List January 2002)

 

JOHNNY BUFFALO Vigilante...Renegade....Murderer....Outlaw....

"You can't hate us all...You can't kill us all neither!"

Johnny Buffalo has sworn an oath of bloody vengeance. His sidekick has been brutally murdered. Army justice condemns his friends to prison and death by hanging. Army justice is white and white men are the enemy.

Filled with hate for all whites, Johnny hurls himself into a savage fight for his own brand of justice. Yet, he knows this is a fight he cannot win. Facing certain death, hunted by the Army, the Texas Rangers and a posse of killers, Johnny means to hunt down the men who murdered his sidekick and he'll kill any white man who gets in his way.

Johnny's vigilante trail is lonely, terrible and bloody. Hate is a raging poison. Single-minded, bitter, bent on murderous revenge, Johnny's final battle is with himself as he faces the spectre of a painful truth:

Hatred and Humanity have no color; men cannot live with hatred, nor survive together without justice.

Johnny's story is violent, packed with the true excitement and gripping action of history. The historical setting is 1880's Texas, set in a region that is a fictional composite of that huge, storied state and former republic.

From the author, Dan Smith , August 26, 1999 
Background notes on "Johnny Buffalo":

Johnny Buffalo is a fast moving, action novel of the Old West. It tells the story of a Black Buffalo soldier's fight for justice on the Texas frontier. It is also the story of the white Texans and Army officers who fight with him and against him. The novel is based upon careful research of actual events (not characters) from history books, newspaper accounts and army archives.

Reviews: 

Thumper Says:
...Just finished reading Johnny Buffalo... I loved it! Dan Smith did a wonderful job... loaded with historical facts....action packed...fast paced.

A reader and fan: Joyce Tebbetts Davies writes:

Not just another "old-west story. Well written...Mr. Smith has humanized the plight of the Buffalo Soldier. ...Johnny Buffalo shows many emotions; desperation, patriotism, loyalty, hatred and love...a believable person. You'll find yourself empathizing with him no matter what your own race or background. The plot moves swiftly without bogging down.

Historical Notes:

Four Black Regiments: the 25th Infantry, the 24th Infantry, the Ninth Cavalry and the Tenth Cavalry were created from the several regular army regiments of Black soldiers which saw action against the Confederacy. In addition to fighting Indians and the Mexican army, and serving with Teddy Roosevelt in Cuba (raising the U.S. colors on San Juan Hill), these troopers acted as peace officers, pursuing rustlers, horse thieves murderers and other outlaws in the southwest. They captured the great Apache Chief, Geronimo; they pursued Billy Bonney, a.k.a. Billy the Kid and virtually stopped the Lincoln County war, just to name a few of many important events in which these unheralded Black Americans had a part.

Of course these troopers fought against race prejudice. The unreconstructed south was a cauldron of intolerance, race hatred, violence and murder. The Buffalo Soldiers fought for the right to be men and to serve their country as men. Their own government forced upon them, the poorest, shoddiest equipment, food, medical care, the lowest pay, the loneliest, most dangerous outposts. Their officers, often commanded these regiments with an eye out for the quick promotion that had to be offered as incentive. Many of these white officers, indeed, many white citizens of the period, both North and South, were incapable then of seeing Black Americans as brother humans.

The women of the Buffalo Soldiers lived through the same bitter hardships of the men they loved and whose lives they made whole. The Soldiers' women were wives, whores, mothers, teachers and more. The frontier was hard on all women, more so for Black women, or any woman, Mexican or White or Indian who loved a Black Soldier in Texas.

The story of the Buffalo Soldiers, and the many true stories about Blacks in the Old West and in Western folklore, are largely untold Johnny Buffalo is a gripping tale of adventure, a story whose telling is long overdue.

 

Related Links

Andover IRS's Dan Smith writes novels of the Texas frontier
http://www.breaktimeonline.com/news/200002/CU_001.html