Herbert Morton Stoops was born on a ranch in 1887, seemingly the perfect setting for this future illustrator of the history of the American West. Stoops grew up around men, both cowboys and Indians, who had lived in a bygone West of raw nature, massive buffalo herds and Indian wars, that, by the time of Stoops' boyhood, had slipped away and become the past.

Stoops graduated from Utah State College in 1905 at the young age of eighteen. He then worked on the "Examiner" and "Morning Call" newspapers in San Francisco as an artist. More than ten years later, in 1916, he studied at the Chicago Art Institute. Interestingly, while in Chicago he met future playwrights and movie screen writers and producers Charles Ma...