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AMERIKIDS® Novelettes - Teenagers

Here are possible teenage novelettes for the consumer market.

These same novelettes can also be transposed for the adults we feature in the PONY EXPRESS RIDER such as Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Chief Black Kettle (Chief Black Eagle), Angelina (Greer) Grimke, and the Knights of the Golden Circle.

WILLIAM CODY ( teenager)

Bill Cody now 14, covers the Fort Laramie- Fort Bridger, Wyoming route for the Pony Express.  He has already done a ride over 350 miles. Bill lives on his horse, since the Kansas Indians showed him how to ride Indian Style. His father was murdered at an anti-slavery rally when he was only 11 years old. His first job as breadwinner of the family was carrying messages for A. Majors Freight Co, a wagon train serving Army outposts. This is when he saw his first stampeding Buffalo and fought his first Indian. Bill likes bringing his mother money for the family. His next job was as a bull whacker for supply trains, sometimes racing the mule driven wagon trains. Cody earned his job as a Pony Express Rider when Majors & Co.started the Pony Express Co.

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CALAMITY JANE ( teenager)

Martha Jane Cannary Burke

Jane is expert at riding stubborn horses. She likes it, when she and the horse feel wild and free. Her parents are having a hard time farming and don't like the fights between the gangs of raiders favoring either side of the slavery issue. They are thinking of moving West as soon as the fighting finishes. Calamity was born in Missouri in a backwoods cabin farm. She can't read or write very well since she grew up with five younger brothers and had a sister to look after. She loves horses and begins riding and hunting when still a young girl.

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KIT CARSON ( teenager)

Kit's success as an Indian agent is partly the result of his simple code of honesty. The Indians also admire him for his love of children.   Christopher Carson is only 5'6" but he is an expert shot with a rifle. He can not, however, even read or write a word. When Kit was nine his father was killed by a falling tree limb. When he was 15, his mother apprenticed him to a saddler and harness maker. He doesn't like being kept indoors over a saddle bench. He misses hunting along the Missouri River and hears stories about the new frontier. He runs away and get a job as a "cavy boy", driving the spare mules and oxen on the wagon trains in the deserts. He even crosses the country on horse back in three months just to get a letter to the President.

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WILLIAM WELLS BROWN, ( teenager)

1815-84

William lives in England where he just wrote a book about his escape to freedom. This is an immediate best seller. He is very passionate about a new movement to free the Black people, called Abolitionism. William Wells Brown was born into slavery in Kentucky and then taken to Missouri as a teenager, but he escapes slavery and becomes a free man.  As part of his work, he  helps other slaves flee to Canada. While working on Lake Erie ships he learns how to read and write and soon becomes an author.

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JESSE & FRANK JAMES (teenagers)

Jesse Woodson James was born in Missouri, a slave state. His brother Frank was 4 years older than him. Their father abandoned them when Jesse was two years old in order to seek gold in California. The James family, along with many other Missourians are on the side of the Confederacy.

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RICHARD EGAN ( teenager)

Richard is a fast rider which helps him when facing Paiute Indians. He is strong and can spend hours in the saddle. His father is superintendent of the Pony Express, Utah Division , and is the body guard to Brigham Young, the Governor of Utah and leader of the Mormons. Richard is also a devout Mormon, riding for the Pony Express through the Utah territory between Salt Lake City and Rush Valley.

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BELLE BOYD ( late teens)

Belle wants to be known as the "Rebel Joan of Arc" and continues spying for the Confederacy. She was born in Virginia and believes in the Southern way of life. She killed a Union soldier who entered her home, but was never put in jail. As a spy, she overhears the latest Union strategies. She secretly moves through Union military lines to inform General Jackson, of the Confederate Army, about Union activities.

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SARAH  WINNEMUCCA (teenager)

Sarah, born in 1844 in Nevada Territory is the granddaughter of   John C. Fremont's Paiute Indian guide, Captain Truckee. Sarah joined her mother on a ranch in California. As a teen she studies in San Jose schools but she and the other Paiute students are expelled from the school when White parents object to them during the Paiute War of 1860. During the Snake War, the military asks Sarah to be an interpreter. She mediates between her people and the pioneer settlers. Despite her influence, the Paiutes are relocated to a Reservation in Washington Territory. Sarah speaks out against the Bureau of Indian Affairs in San Francisco,and the government brings her East to lecture about the plight of the Paiute people. To attract crowds, Winnemucca dresses as an Indian princess. She writes a book entitled "Life Among the Paiutes, Their Wrongs and Claims" and then opens a school for Indian children in Nevada.

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