Capps, Benjamin, 1922-2001

Award-winning author of western literature, born in Dundee, Texas. Works include western novels, historical non-fiction, short stories, essays, and book reviews. Capps' major works explore a variety of topics set in the West.

Award-winning author of western literature, born in Dundee, Texas. Works include western fiction, historical non-fiction, short stories, essays, and book reviews. Capps' major works explore a variety of topics set in the west.

Benjamin Franklin Capps was born June 11, 1922, in Dundee, Texas, in the West Texas country he writes about. He grew up on a ranch near Archer City, Texas. After graduating from Archer City High School in May 1938, at age fifteen, Capps left home to attend Texas Technological College in Lubbock. After a year of college he served one year in the Civilian Conservation Corps. Capps then worked as a surveyor for the U.S. Department of Engineering in the construction of airfields in Colorado and Texas, and as a truck driver in the building of Lake Texoma. In 1942 he married Marie Thompson, whom he met in Colorado, and entered the U.S. Army Air Force. During World War II he flew forty bombing missions as the navigator of a B-24 Liberator in the Pacific and attained the rank of first lieutenant.

Thanks to the GI Bill, Capps was able to attend The University of Texas at Austin after the war. He graduated in 1948 with a B.A. in English and a Phi Beta Kappa key, and in 1949 he received his M.A. in English. After graduation Capps taught English and Journalism for two years at Northeastern State College in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. Teaching was time-consuming and did not allow him time to write and be with his family. In 1951, Capps left teaching to write full-time in Paris, Texas. A year later, his savings exhausted, he took a job as a machinist after he moved the family to Grand Prairie, Texas. He reasoned that such work would be different enough from writing fiction that it would not drain his creativity. During the years as a machinist and tool-and-die maker, he continued to write and publish short stories and articles in addition to accumulating a wealth of material on the Old West. With the help and support of his family, Capps left his mechanical trade in 1961 to become a full-time writer. In 1976 he returned briefly to teaching as the first writer-in-residence at UTA, where he taught a senior writing workshop and served as a consultant to the English Department. That year he co-edited, with Dr. Thomas Sutherland, the first book UTA published, Duncan Robinson: Texas Teacher and Humanist .

Capps' first novel, Hanging at Comanche Wells, a Ballantine paperback, was published in 1962. It related the tale of a valiant deputy helping to keep peace in a town awaiting the execution of a convicted hired gun. The Trail to Ogallala was Capps' first hardcover novel and established him as a major chronicler of the West. The story realistically dramatized a trail drive by focusing on moving a herd of cattle 1,500 miles to market. The novel received a Spur Award from the Western Writers of America and the Levi Strauss Golden Saddleman Award for its outstanding contribution to western literature in 1964. It was selected by the National Association of Independent Schools as one of the ten best books that year for pre-college readers. It was also selected as one of thirty-one books placed in the White House Library that year by the American Booksellers Association. Another novel, Sam Chance, profiled a West Texas cattle baron and won the Spur Award for 1965.

In 1969, The White Man's Road, the story of a Comanche half-breed trying to find his place in the world of western Oklahoma, won Capps his third Spur Award. It also won the Wrangler Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame and Western Heritage Center for the best western novel of the year. The True Memoirs of Charley Blankenship (1972) and Woman Chief (1980) were each one of three finalists for the Spur. True Memoirs is the light-hearted story of a runaway who "went west" as a boy and came back a man. Woman Chief is based on the story of a captive Gros Ventre girl who became a warrior chief in a band of the Crow tribe. The Warren Wagontrain Raid won the Wrangler Award in 1974 for the best western book of non-fiction and was also a finalist for the Spur.

Other Capps books include: The Brothers of Uterica (1967), which portrayed a common but almost forgotten ingredient of Western settlement, the socialist colony, and A Woman of the People (1966), the story of a white girl and her sister captured by Comanches. The Heirs of Franklin Woodstock, published in 1989, is Capps first contemporary novel. Set against West Texas ranch life, it explores the relationship between grown children and aging parents. Tales of the Southwest, a collection of short stories written over a span of forty years, was published in 1991. In addition to western novels, Capps is recognized as one of America's authorities on Indian life and culture. He produced two works on the American Indian for Time-Life Books, The Indian and The Great Chiefs .

Capps is also the author of numerous published short stories, articles, essays, and book reviews. In 1991 he won the Western Writers of America Spur Award for one of his short stories, Cimarron, The Killer. He writes on many subjects and does not consider himself only a western writer, even though his greatest successes were western novels. However, he is primarily interested in the past and its influence on us today. Much of his writing's appeal lies in his knowledge of the Old West's folklore. According to Capps, his writing's aim is to be authentic and "to probe the human nature and human motives" involved in his stories. His works are painstakingly researched for historical accuracy and generally explore lesser known facets of the American frontier. The Western Literature Association honored Capps with the Distinguished Achievement Award in October 1986.

Benjamin Capps died December 23, 2001.

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