In the program "Historically yours", Stéphane Bern tells the story of the true (and little known) history of the Daltons.
The cartoonist Jul, who has taken up the torch of the Lucky Luke comics, reacts to the lives of the four villains that he brings back to life under his pencil with each album.
Since its origins, Lucky Luke has always played with American historical reality.
And this is particularly the case with the four accomplices he chases from album to album: the Dalton brothers.
Joe, Jack, William and Averell Dalton actually never existed.
On the other hand, other Dalton have indeed marked American history.
Not only did the real Dalton brothers exist, but Lucky Luke met them in his early days, in the album
Hors la Loi,
published in 1951. But Morris, the creator of the comic, decides to kill the four western brothers. from the end of this first volume.
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Daltons lookalikes
The outcome varies according to the editions of this first volume: the four brothers are either hanged or shot.
But one thing is certain: they do end up six feet underground.
And that, Morris quickly regretted.
The disappearance of the Daltons deprived him of a good narrative spring.
This is why Goscinny, when he took up the scripts for the series in 1957, suggested that Morris bring in look-alikes of the real Daltons.
Four cousins much less wicked, but much more stupid, "a stroke of genius" by the authors according to Jul, who today draws the Lucky Luke
Joe, Jack, William and Averell first appear on the 23rd album in the series,
Lucky Luke vs. Joss Jamon
, before becoming as recurring characters as the dog Rantanplan.
"Goscinny and Morris created larger-than-life Daltons characters that made them history," says Jul.
"One wonders if the Dalton in the comics are not more real than the real ones."
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A much larger and more respectable family
The story of the real Dalton brothers begins on the Oklahoma side, in the 1890s. Which is actually quite late in the history of the West, since most of the Lucky Luke stories take place rather in the middle. from the 1860s.
The Dalton family numbered well over four brothers: the Dalton parents had fifteen children, 10 brothers and 5 sisters.
But what is quite correct, however, is that there were indeed four of the ten brothers who became criminals: Robert, Grat, William and Emmett Dalton.
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The explanations of Philippe Geluck
Jul recalls the important role of the mother of a family, in reality, as in fiction.
"Ma 'Dalton is inspired by the real Adeline Dalton, who was desperate to see her sons go wrong," he reveals.
Yet the story could have turned out differently.
The Daltons came from a rather quiet family.
Above all, the big brother, Frank Dalton, embodied the law, since he was a marshal, an official in charge of public order and member of one of the oldest American federal agencies.
Their job is to pursue fugitives, protect witnesses and monitor transfers of prisoners.
From the theft of horses to the great crook
Grat, Emmett and Bob Dalton also served as marshals, but the death of their older brother in the line of duty ended up disgusting them at the trade.
Especially since they accuse their own federal agency of being plagued by corruption.
It is this resentment that will tip them to the other side of the law.
The Dalton brothers start out small.
At first, they confined themselves to stealing horses or trafficking in hooch on the side of the Indian territories, where the sale of alcohol was prohibited.
But in 1890, we changed scale.
The company has grown and the Dalton brothers are starting to think bigger.
Little by little, the gang multiplied the rail attacks, in particular on the Santa Fe line, between Kansas and New Mexico.
Legend has greatly exaggerated the extent of their exploits, but the gang has indeed carried out a dozen attacks in a few months.
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The attack too many
Very quickly, their nerve and their way of proceeding, without any physical violence, made us start talking about them in the American press.
But a few months later, in June 1891, an attack turned sour, with one dead and four wounded left behind.
The tension is growing.
On the side of the authorities, the indulgence is over: the Daltons must be stopped.
Their heads are priced at $ 40,000, or about a million dollars today.
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The brothers are aware that the noose is tightening.
They then decide to go for it all: one last raid, one smoldering blow that would put them away financially for the rest of their lives and make them part of the legend of the West.
They decide to rob two banks at the same time, in broad daylight and in the same place.
In Coffeyville in this case, a small town in Kansas.
Unfortunately, Chapman, one of their informers, betrayed them and the city knows about the attack.
A shooting breaks out between the inhabitants of Coffeyville, even in the two banks targeted.
In just twelve minutes, there were eight dead.
Emmett Dalton, hit 23 times, will be the only brother to survive.
A Dalton star of bookstores and cinema
Sentenced to life imprisonment, Emmett Dalton is released for good behavior after fifteen years.
In 1918, he published
Beyond the Law
an autobiographical tale that traces the history of the gang and its family.
Brother Dalton also played his own part in one of the first westerns shot in Hollywood.
His other book
When the Daltons rode
was adapted for film in 1940, three years after his death in California.
Emmett Dalton, was the last survivor of a family who has always flirted between law and crime on the one hand, and between history and fiction on the other.