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he first person in Sheridan, Wyoming, to is tied to the energy industry, it is subject to
5
Tlearn that Hot Tamale Louie had been knifed an endless cycle of boom and bust, and to a
to death was William Henry Harrison, Jr. The ballooning population during the good years. The
news came by telegram, the day after the murder. pattern of social problems that attend that kind
Harrison was the son of a member of Congress, of rapid population growth — increased crime,
the great-grandson of one President, the great- higher divorce rates, lower school attendance,
great-great-grandson of another President, and more mental-health issues — has been known,
the great-great- great-great-grandson of one of since the nineteen-seventies, as Gillette
Redefining America
the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Syndrome. Today, the town consists of three
Hot Tamale Louie was the son of nobody knows interstate exits’ worth of tract housing and fast
who, the grandson of nobody knows who, and the food, surrounded by open-pit mines and pinned
great-great-grandson of nobody knows who. He to the map by oil rigs. Signs on the highway warn
had been selling tamales in Sheridan since Buffalo about the fifty-mile-per-hour winds.
Bill rode in the town parade, sold them when A couple of hundred Muslims live in 5
President Taft came to visit, was still selling them northeastern Wyoming, and last fall some of
when the Russians sent Sputnik into space and them pooled their money to buy a one-story
the British sent the Beatles to America. house at the end of Gillette’s Country Club
By then, Louie was a local legend, and his Road, just outside a development called Country
murder shocked everyone. It was frontpage, Club Estates, in one of the nicer neighborhoods
above-the-fold news in Sheridan, and made in town. They placed a sign at the end of the
headlines throughout Wyoming, Colorado, and driveway, laid prayer rugs on top of the wall-
South Dakota. It travelled by word of mouth to-wall carpeting, and began meeting there for
across the state to Yellowstone, and by post to Friday worship — making it, in function if not in
California, where former Sheridan residents form, the third mosque in the state.
opened their mailboxes to find letters from Most locals reacted to this development
home-town friends mourning Louie’s death. with indifference or neighborly interest, if they
That was in 1964. Two years later, the killer reacted at all. But a small number formed a
was tried, found guilty, hanged, removed from group called Stop Islam in Gillette to protest the
the gallows, then hanged again. Within a few mosque; to them, the Muslims it served were
years after that, Louie, his tamales, his murder, unwelcome newcomers to Wyoming, at best a
and everything else about him had faded from menace to the state’s cultural traditions and at
2
the headlines. A half century passed. Then, late worst incipient jihadis. When those protests
last year, he wound up back in the news. darkened into threats, the local police got
The events that propelled him there took involved, as did the F.B.I.
place in the town of Gillette, ninety minutes Whatever their politics, many outsiders,
southeast of Sheridan. Situated in the stark center on hearing about Stop Islam in Gillette, shared
of Wyoming’s energy-rich but otherwise empty at least one of its sentiments: a measure of
Powder River Basin, Gillette grew up around surprise that a Muslim community existed in
1
wildcat wells and coal mines — dry as a bone such a remote corner of the country. Wyoming
except in its saloons, prone to spontaneous is geographically huge — you could fit all of
combustion from the underground fires burning New England inside it, then throw in Hawaii
perpetually beneath it. Because its economy
2 Islamic fundamentalists who undertake or support violent,
1 Exploratory wells in unexplored or unproven places. — Eds. armed confrontations in the name of religion. — Eds.
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