Looking For Dan: The Puzzling Life of a Frontier Character-Daniel DuBois

The American Southwest of the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth century was a magnet for young men seeking adventure. These men were analogous to Christopher “Kit” Carson, a saddler’s apprentice who ran away from his workbench to become legendary frontiersmen, Indian agent, and Union General in the Civil War, the brothers William and Charles Bent, who built a trading and political empire in the early days of New Mexico and Colorado, and Lucien Maxwell who operated the largest land grant in the Southwest and established the first bank in New Mexico. The Southwest was a place where a youth could shape his destiny and reinvent himself. One of these adventurers was Dan Dubois, a man whose life remains a conundrum, a puzzle and a mystery, yet unsolved.