The Fictional Date of "Red Ransom"
I happened to see the episode "Red Ransom", 8 February 1960, directed by Sidney Salkow and written by Dean Riesner, recently on Starz Encore.
The synopsis in IMDB says:
Jim Hardie is working with the Chickasaw Wells Fargo Agent, Clay Arvin, to capture the Apache renegade outlaw Joe Black. The two men along with a couple of deputies capture Joe Black but unknown to them the local Apache chief Akana is watching them. After locking Joe Black in the local jail, Clay invites Jim home for dinner with his wife Clara and daughter Jenny. While there they learn Jenny has not returned so Clay and Jim ride out to look for her. As they find her berry picking basket, they are confronted by Akana who shows them he has Jenny. He wants to trade her for Joe Black, his brother, by the end of the next day. The city fathers meet on the issue and decide to turn Joe Black loose despite Jim and Luke the Marshal refusing to go along with the idea. However, they use Clara to trick Jim and release Joe Black. Jim goes after Joe Black after a delay and discovers Joe is not headed back to Akana.
There's a little problem in geography here. Presumably Chickasaw Wells would be in Chickasaw territory. The Chickasaws were one of the five civilized tribes, they lived in Tennessee and Mississippi until moved west on "The Trail of Tears" to The Indian Territory in modern Oklahoma in the 1830s.
And of course the typical Apaches lived in Arizona, New Mexico, Southwest Texas, and Sonora and Chihuahua in Mexico, not in Oklahoma. But there was a small tribe of Kiowa Apaches on the plains, allied with the Kiowas and remnants of the once numerous Plains Apaches. References to 19th century Apaches on the great plains should be to the Kiowa Apaches. So Joe Black and Akana and their people should be Kiowa Apaches.
Wikipedia says Tales of Wells Fargo is set in the 1870s and 1880s. No doubt many episodes have data to support or contradict that date range.
One of the townsmen feared that the Apaches might commit another Fetterman Massacre in their town of Chickasaw Wells. it seems to me that a historic Indian attack on a town would have been a better analogy than a battle with soldiers in the open.
Thus the townsman could have mentioned the Great Raid of 1840 when Comanches under Buffalo Hump raided Victoria on August 6 and looted and burned Linnville on August 8 while the citizens cowered on boats in the bay. Or the Battle of Seattle on January 26, 1856. Or the First and Second Battles of New Ulm, Minnesota on August 19 and 23, 1862.
In any case, the Fetterman Massacre was on December 21, 1866 and news would have taken until January, 1867 to reach some parts of the west. And it seems to me that if "Red Ransom" was after they got news in Chickasaw Wells of Custer's Last Stand on June 25, 1876, there would have been a high probability that the townsman would have mentioned "another Little Bighorn" instead of "another Fetterman Massacre". So "Red Ransom" would be in or after 1867 and probably before July, 1876, which agrees fairly well with Wikipedia's statement that Tales of Wells Fargo is in the 1870s and 1880s.
But if Chickasaw Wells was in Chickasaw territory it would have to be after parts of the Chickasaw reservation were made available for white settlement. So that would be after the Dawes Act of 1887 and the later purchase of Chickasaw lands for white settlement. The first Land Rush to claim land in Oklahoma was on April 22, 1889, and there were later ones on September 22 and 28, 1891, April 19, 1892, September 16, 1893, and in 1895. But I don't know when Chickasaw lands were first opened to white settlement. If this reasoning is accurate it thus seems improbable that even the earliest episodes of Tales of Wells Fargo could be in the 1870s.
So "Red Ransom" is an example of a western movie or TV episode that typically gives inconsistent information about its date.
Note that "Lolo Montez" should happens a few years before Lola Montez died in 1861 and also after railroads first reached Arizona in 1879. I can't help wondering if the writer got it backwards and thought it should happen after 1861 and before 1879 instead of before 1861 and after 1879.