Joe Chancellor, unknown member of the Wild Bunch

Occasionally, from the murky depths of old west and outlaw history a new face will rise and float to the surface. Outlaws who, during their time were were notorious for their crimes and villainy . Through the years however, as memories have faded, they have been lost to history. Such was the case with lawman George Scarborough and outlaws such as George Musgrave (High Five or the "Black Jack" Christian gang), Tom Capehart and Dave Atkins (Ketchum gang), Ben Kilpatrick, Will Cruzan, (Wild Bunch) George Flat Nose Currie (Hole in the Wall gang) Broncho Bill Walters, Herbert Grice,  and others. These have, until recently, have been either ignored or forgotten, and as a result, dumped into the dust bin of history. When outlaws like these have been mentioned it has been only in passing, or they have been relegated to footnotes. Only recently has their notoriety been resurrected.

One outlaw however has been so shadowy and mysterious, so hidden in the background,  that most historians, even today, have either never heard of him or do not understand his importance in outlaw history. That outlaw was known as Joe Chancellor,  a New Mexican outlaw of some note of the 1880s and 1890s. He was a close friend to Tom Ketchum and Will Carver. A mortal enemy of fellow outlaw Dave Atkins. He was a member of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch and knew Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, and Harvey Logan personally. He participated in many of their robberies and depredations. He was also a Pinkerton informant. So valuable to the Pinkertons that they based many of their reports on his information.

After the demise of the Wild Bunch Chancellor was completely forgotten, or ignored in favor of more famous outlaws. So much so that over the years Joe Chancellor has been confused by historians with many different outlaws. In Wyoming he was misidentified as Tom O'Day a sometime member of the Hole-in-the-Wall gang. In Texas he was confused with Will Cheney of Christoval, friend of the Ketchums and sometimes informant for the Pinkertons (Jeffery Burton The Deadliest Outlaws). In New Mexico he was mixed up with Charles Collins aka RedWeaver a fellow member of the Ketchum gang (Erna Fergusson, Murder & Mystery in New Mexico,1948). Even the Pinkertons kept up a perplexing debate between 1904 and 1916 as to just who he was, trying to decide if he was Dave Atkins or not.

However, Joe Chancellor was also a valuable source for early writers who wrote on the demise of the outlaw gangs of the West. He was possibly the unnamed informant to early western writer Michael Williams author of "Real Men of Arizona" a collection of articles that appeared in Pearson's Magazine in 1912 and to Carl B Livingston "Hunting Down the Black Jack Gang," Wide World magazine 1933. Both articles early sources of information on the Ketchum  Gang and the Wild Bunch. In New Mexico he was an acquaintance of Elfego Baca noted gunman, lawman, lawyer, and politician in New Mexico. He also sat down for interviews with noted New Mexican newspaperman and historian George Fitzpatrick.

Joe Chancellor aka Joe Evans 1895