Kansas agitator. [volume] (Garnett, Kan.) 1890-1905, 1899-06-16
KING OF SWINDLERS.
GIGANTIC SCHEME OF A NOTED
BUNKO MAN.
.5ho Played Game for Miniature
AUTHORIZATIONS wife and . Clever
Tale Took In Such Men as Conklin
aud Ingersoll.

There has lately been released from
the New Mexico penitentiary man
who in his time perhaps caused as
much world comment as any living
American. and who, for unmitigated
gall and audacity, deserves to rank as
monarch Of his kind. He played the
biggest game seen in the western
hemisphere since the Scotch financier
undertook to replenish the depleted ex-
cheQuer of that Louis after whom the
deiuge came. John Laws scheme was
big and embraced two continents, and
will probably go down to history as a
pattern Of its class. Yet in many re-
spects James Allison Reavis, the king
of the bunko men. deserves more last
ing fame. If Law deluded the best
men of his time, Reavis pulled the
wool over the eyes of some Of the
sharpest OF his. Law must take a
back seat, too. when the difference In
the material Is considered, for, while
he had royal favor and unlimited
means at his back, the American
swindler had nothing but his own wits
to rely on. And for more than a
quarter of century they stood him in
right good stead.
Reavis was the son of farmer in
Henry county, Missouri who went into
the Confederate army during the civil
war, and thereafter led life of ad-
venture for several years in North
Central and South America. He was
a sailor and a soldier, clerk and a
bookkeeper, street car conductor, an
insurance agent, drummer, and fin
My a real estate agent in St.
rouis. There he made the &C.
uaintance Of a man of the
lame of Willing, who hired him
to investigate the genuineness of an
old Spanish grant for a small piece Of
property in Arizona. In this inquiry
Reav's learned the methods and the
laws Of the old Spanish occupation,
and his experience with the Willing
claim seems to have suggested the
idea of getting up one for himself,
which he did on most magnificent
scale. After ten or twelve years of
the most ingenious and Industrious la
Dor he asked congress to confirm to
his wife the title to a tract of land in
New Mexico and Arizona nearly twice
as large as the state Of Massachusetts,,
about forty miles wide and 800 miles
long, and containing a population of
10000 or 10000. The Santa Fe Rail-
road company recognized the Justice of
the claim before it was acted upon by
congress, and paid him 1000 for
right of way across his wife's proper
ty. The Southern Pacific company not
only paid greater amount fer right
of way, but its chief owners are said
to have furnished Reavis from time to
time not less than 100000 to pay the
expense of proving his title.
He worked at this scheme with the
greatest of patience and skill for more
than twenty-five years. He not only
forged royal grant bearing the sig
nature of the king of Spain and his
ministers, but also series Of Wills,
large bunch Of deeds, records Of pro-
bate and other legal proceedings, bap-
tismal and marriage certificates, and,
what was more difficult and daring, he
invented long line Of distinguished
ancestors for his peon wife,, connected
them by ties Of kinship with the royal
house Of Spain, secured a full set of
their portraits, both in oil and on
ivory miniatures, wrote their biogra-
phies, supplied from his own brain cor
respondence that had passed between
them and distinguished personages of
their time, and surrounded them with
such complete and perfect evidences of
existence that men like Roscoe Conk-
ling, ex-senator Edmunds, Thomas F.
Bayard, Robert G. Ingersoll, Bourke
Cochran and others were completely
humbugged and accepted his fictions
for facts. John w. Mackay, c. p.
Huntington, the late Leland Stanford,
Charles Croker and other famous
financiers furnished him money to car
ry on his crime, the cabinet ministers
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