Reminiscences of a Showman

"Rising, the sun points westward,
      By the shadows of the trees,
The shadows of the mountains
      And monuments and men.
And westward is the trend
      From the continents and the seas;
From all the earth, within the scope
      Of mortal sight and ken." - Will Visscher.

History, at best, is but a chronicle of time and events. From time immemorial the star of empire has marked its way westward and among its men who have blazed the trail none are more remarkable and pronounced in their achievements that the subject of my story.

Colonel W. F. Cody, "Buffalo Bill," the hero horseman, will stand for all time as a typical American who has been received and honored in all lands, and who has personally visited and appeared in more cities and towns in America and Europe and before more people than any other individual, past or present, whether ruler, government official or tourist.

As a type of perfect manhood he has been selected by renowned artists, such as Ross, Bonheur, Remington, Schreyvogel, Cross, Lenders, Stevens, Deming and St. Gaudens, who have made his camp their mecca for their greatest studies of the brush and chisel.

No effort of the writer can add to his laurels or detract from his greatness. The romance of his life, fraught with all the dangers of the frontier through which he has passed, are matters of history, and I can only add to it by the personal recollection of more than a third of a century passed in his companionship and repeat the facts that I know to be true from intimate knowledge and information gathered from his own lips and those who associated with him in his boyhood days.

His Early Life.

William Frederick Cody was born at LeClaire, Scott County, Iowa, on the west bank of the Mississippi River, nearly midway between Davenport and Clinton, February 26, 1846.

When a mere boy "Little Billy" became an adept at boating, fishing, shooting and in the art of horsemanship. He was made fatherless at the age of nine years by a frontier strife in "Bleeding Kansas," which culminated in the great civil war.

While yet a bare-footed boy, at the age of ten, he received his first intimation of the wild West, or a country farther beyond the Mississippi, by meeting a party of trappers four miles west of where Fort Leavenworth, Kansas now stands, as they were returning from an expedition in the foot hills of the Rocky Mountains on their way to Western Missouri to dispose of their pelts and trophies of the hunt.

At the early age of twelve he was adjudged competent to fill the post of trained courier by such experienced men as Russel, Majors, Wardell & Co., a dangerous mission - a man's work - for which he received a man's pay.

At thirteen, being cornered by a red brave whom he met alone on the prairies, he took refuge in a couleet, outgeneraled his foe and with unerring aim dispatched the spirit of his first red skin to the "happy hunting ground."

As a pony express rider he found two of his comrades killed while performing their duties. He volunteered to cover their routes in addition to his own without stopping, and returned to his post on time, completing the round trip of 234 miles on horseback without a stop except to change horses, in twenty-two and a half hours - one of the longest and greatest pony express rides ever made. He also rode his famous horse "Buckskin Joe," when pursued by a band of Indians, a continuous ride of 115 miles, stopping only for feed and water.

Named Buffalo Bill.

In furnishing fresh game and meat to builders of the Union Pacific Railway, he killed over 6,000 buffalo in one season. By this achievement as a hunter, which won for him the sobriquet of "Buffalo Bill," he has related to me that the title was acquired by degrees. First, when he brought in some nice, fat carcasses of the buffalo, which he had killed, he was greeted by a cheer from the hungry workmen, who had been feeding on salt pork or bacon, with the welcome cry:

"Here comes Bill with his nice fresh buffalo."

But as time advanced and the graders or workmen were overfed with the daily supply of nice juicy buffalo steak and choice cuts they soon grew tired of the menu and their next complaint was:

"Here comes Bill, with his old tough buffalo."

And the next abbreviation simmered down to the cold greeting:

"Hello! 'Buffalo Bill! Where is your bull beef?"

In a contest for the title of supremacy in the chase with the renowned scout, Bill Comstock, who was also noted for his ability in killing buffalo, and while mounted on his celebrated horse, "Big Brigham," who understood the art of hunting almost as well as his skillful rider, he killed sixty-nine buffalo in two runs against Comstock's fifty-two. Discarding saddle and bridle without dismounting he killed the last twenty buffalo while riding bareback, thus giving permanence to his title of Buffalo Bill.

He also made the greatest ride in history on "Old Charlie," one of his famous war horses, in an emergency, over the prairies, making over 152 miles in nine hours and forty-five minutes. He carried important messages for General Sheridan to two distant commands and returned in a blinding snowstorm with the thermometer below zero, covering the distance of 359 miles in less than sixty hours. For this service he was awarded an appointment as chief of scouts for that division.

As a pony express rider, wagon master, hunter, guide, stage driver, scout and Indian fighter, he rendered valuable services in the southwest, civil and Indian wars. At the close of hostilities between the States he was appointed by General Sheridan as chief scout for the central plains, inaugurating successful campaigns in winter and summer without ceasing. As a pony express rider, wagon master, hunter, guide, stage driver, scout and Indian fighter, he rendered valuable services in the southwest, civil and Indian wars. At the close of hostilities between the States he was appointed by General Sheridan as chief scout for the central plains, inaugurating successful campaigns in winter and summer without ceasing. He especially distinguished himself under the command of General Eugene A. Carr, in an arduous campaign resulting in the victory of the battle of Summit Springs and the killing of "Tall Bill," an Indian chief, on July 11, 1869.

In Custer Campaign.

In the Custer campaign of 1876, he was chief of scouts for General Custer, General Merritt and General Carr, and guided these commands in the battle of War Bonnet Creek, where, in a personal encounter, after receiving a defiant and insulting challenge, he killed "Yellow Hand," an Indian chief, on July 17, 1876, this being his "first scalp for Custer" after the massacre at "Wounded Knee," July 25 of that year. He thus defeated Yellow Hand's purpose by turning the hostiles back and preventing their junction with "Sitting Bull." Both of these important episodes have been reproduced as moving pictures with the approval and assistance of the United States government in loaning their troops and permitting the Indians in that section to leave their reservations and join the moving picture expedition with Colonel Cody and General Miles to direct and re-enact the scenes in which they originally appeared.

After the Civil War, and because of the friendly action of Russia during it, the nation rose to pay compliments to the young Grand Duke Alexis, which culminated in the largest and most spectacular of the grand hunts known in history. Among the notable parties delegated to Colonel Cody's care was that of Sir George Gore, the Earl of Dunraven, and the famous James Gordon Bennett expedition, which resulted in an invitation for "Buffalo Bill" to visit east of the Mississippi to New York as a personal guest of the proprietor of the New York Herald.

Origin of the Show.

Those events in his romantic life made him the hero of numerous writers of novelettes, the most conspicuous of whom was Ned Buntlin, who carried the American cavalier through all sorts of exploits and hair-breadth escapes until he became an ideal among readers of romance. He was finally induced to re-enact some of these scenes on the mimic stage, which he found entirely too narrow to properly present his achievements and the "Wild West" exhibition was evolved, which brought him into the show world as an originator of something entirely new and decidedly pronounced as an amusement proposition.

This exhibition, which has made "Buffalo Bill" personally known to more people than any other man that ever lived and in all countries, was first introduced at his home town, North Platte, Neb., July 4, 1882, at a local celebration. Its success was so emphatic and original that it was thoroughly organized for public presentation in May, 1888, at Omaha, Neb. Moving from town to town on regular railway cars, playing upon fair grounds or other enclosures in the open, without any seats except the grand stands, making a triumphant march across the continent to Boston and other Eastern cities, he thereafter immediately became the principal feature of the great world's fairs at Chicago, Paris and London.

As stated in another chapter of these reminiscences I had the honor of presenting "Buffalo Bill" and his exhibition in the heart of New York, at Madison Square Garden, in the intensely interesting and picturesque spectacle or "Drama of Civilization," and later on, as I have shown, I formed a combination by uniting Colonel Cody, Nate Salsberry, who was "Buffalo Bill's" close friend and business associate, up to the time of his death, and James A. Bailey, under whose direction regular road tours were made in this and foreign countries. During all this time the interests and friendship of Colonel Cody and myself have been inseparable.

As many as sixteen ocean steamers have been employed at various times in the world-wide voyages of this institution, which will stand as a grand example of something unique in the annals of amusements. Three special trains have always been at its service to transport Buffalo Bill and his outfit in both hemispheres. Eight hundred men and over 500 horses have been the average number in his entourage. He has often pitched his tents at Barcelona on the spot where Columbus, the discoverer of America, returned with his caravan, and to Genoa, where Columbus was born.

In London.

Heralded and indorsed by such military authorities as Sheridan, Sherman, Merritt, Carr, Miles and others who have showered congratulations and encomiums on their old and implicitedly trusted comrade in arms and on the war path, it is no wonder that his advent in the amusement field met with immediate recognition everywhere, and when he came to exhibit at Earl's Court in London in 1887, which constituted his first trip to that country, the "Wild West" proved a pronounced success and became the most popular feature of Queen Victoria's jubilee, held in celebration of the semi-centennial of her benign reign. So unparalleled was the prestige of "Buffalo Bill" and the “Wild West" that the queen was induced to visit it. The magnitude of this compliment may be inferred from the fact that it was her majesty's first public appearance after the death of her husband, Prince Albert, twenty years before. Nor did her majesty's gracious recognition end there, for so deeply was she impressed and delighted with its novel and educational excellence that by her special command, the performance was given for the entertainment of 3,000 royal representatives assembled from every part of the vast British empire on the globe in honor of the jubilee, with which the fiftieth year of her reign was so joyfully crowned. On that occasion the Prince of Wales, afterwards King Edward VII., taking Colonel Cody aside, said to him:

"Colonel, look around you and you will see more royalty than I ever before have seen at any one time, and undoubtedly more than ever was assembled on any one occasion in the world's history or is likely ever again to be."

This was probably a compliment never before or since accorded to a private individual.

A Historic Banquet.

On "Cody Day" at the Trans-Mississippi exhibition in Omaha in the summer of 1898, the writer had the honor and good fortune to arrange the preliminaries and be among the guests at a banquet given by distinguished citizens to Colonel W. F. Cody who, as a citizen of Nebraska, had become famed throughout the world as "Buffalo Bill." On this occasion Colonel Alexander Majors, whom I have previously mentioned in these chronicles, in a speech at the table told how "Little Billy" Cody, a fatherless western lad, whose sire had been slain by Indians, came to him for employment and how he had engaged the boy to ride as a messenger between the great freight trains and wagons that he and his partner were then operating and sending to and fro in long caravans across the western plains.

Colonel Majors, with whom I have often held extended conversations on the subject of "Buffalo Bill," spoke in high laudation and deep fatherly affection of Cody, both as boy and man, and told many anecdotes concerning the famous plainsman's career as a messenger express rider, hunter and Indian fighter. Among other things, he told how "Little Willie" Cody, when he received his first month's pay of $26, all in silver fifty cent pieces, which was a considerable pay for a boy in his teens to earn, took the coin in a bag and carried it home to his mother, and in his exhilaration spread it all out over the table, "Ain't it splendid, mother, that I can get all this money for you and my sisters.” Just then as I was sitting next to Colonel Cody, listening to the address, he turned to me and audibly remarked:

"Yes, and I have been spreading it ever since," which brought forth a round of laughter from the speakers' platform entirely unexpected.

Colonel Majors dwelled with eloquence upon the true, high character, earnestness and affection, of the faithfulness and intrepidity of Colonel Cody under all circumstances and spoke of him as "my boy who was always a man."

Harking back to his early days, on the frontier, Colonel Cody frequently refers to the brave men with whom he was associated, and among them his lifelong friend, "Wild Bill" Hickok, and this story is specially pertinent because of the fact that "Wild Bill” married the widow of William Lake, the old circus clow' and manager, who was, himself, wilfully killed at Gronby, Nevada, in 1870.

"Wild Bill."

Hickok was a magnificent specimen of manhood and one of the most deadly shots with rifle or pistol who ever lived. Moreover, he was an expert horseman, with nerves of steel and heart as brave as a lion. Standing six feet two inches, broad chested, measuring fifty inches around, with a waist that you could almost span, and with a foot like a woman's; with long blond hair which glistened like gold in the sunlight, and with muscles equal to any trained athlete or prize fighter.

Fiction in its wildest flights could never conceive a more thrilling experience than that which happened to "Wild Bill" in a single-handed encounter with the notorious McCandalass gang of desperados, horse thieves and murderers, who were the terror of Kansas.

It was In 1861 when "Wild Bill" was guiding a detachment of cavalry coming in from Camp Floyd. He had nearly reached the Kansas line, and the story is that while in South Nebraska one afternoon he went out of camp to hunt wild turkeys or something good to eat. On the way he stopped at the cabin of a Mrs. Waltman, a friend of his, for a drink of water, which he drew from the well in a bucket; at that moment Mrs. Waltman came to the door, and the instant she saw him she turned as white as a corpse and screamed:

"Is that you, Bill? Oh! My God! They will kill you! Run! Run! or they will chop you all to bits!"

"Who is going to kill me?" he asked.

"McCandalass and his gang. There are ten of them and you have no chance. They have just gone down the road to the corn field and are liable to be back any minute. McCandalass knows of your bringing in that party of Yankee cavalry, and he swears he will cut your heart out and eat it. Run, Bill! Run, like a good boy, for your life!"

It was too late. They were coming up the lane, with Jack McCandalass in the lead, who shouted:

"That's Bill Hickok's horse; he must be here. Let's skin him alive!"

At this exclamation "Wild Bill" took to the house, which, like most cabins on the prairies, had only one room and two doors, one opening in front and the other in the rear. Looking around the room he saw a rifle hung over the bed, and this with his own revolvers in his belt constituted the weapons with which to defend himself.

McCandalass and his gang surrounded the house, and he himself poked his head inside the doorway; he jumped into the room with his gun leveled to shoot, but he was not quick enough. "Wild Bill's" rifle tore the top of his head off and he fell dead through the doorway.

Mrs. Waltman had escaped by the back door and "Wild Bill" was alone to hold the fort.

There were a few seconds of silence, when the remainder of the gang burst in the doors and the fight began. One, two, three, four, five men were dead, not wounded, as "Wild Bill" always shot to kill. The room was full of smoke; it was shoot, cut and slash on every hand; rough and tumble on the floor and on the bed, striking right and left, while "Bill" chased his antagonists around the room, into the corners, stabbing, chopping, shooting and beating heads and faces with his naked fist and weapons until every man lay dead at his feet. All of this occurred in less than ten minutes, or, in other words, it was a man a minute, when, bleeding everywhere from feet to scalp, the victor staggered out to the well, drank from the bucket and then tumbled the bucket over his head, soaked with his own blood as well as others, and fell fainting just like a girl.

On investigation it was found that "Wild Bill" was wounded by three bullets and eleven buckshot, and cut in thirteen places. It was several months before he fully recovered from the effects of what was one of the most thrilling exploits in border history.

It remained, however, for "Wild Bill" to be assassinated at his home in the Black Hills, and those who visit that locality will find his tomb surrounded by an iron railing in a well-filled cemetery, which bears this inscription:

" 'Wild Bill' - J. B. Hickok - killed by the assassin Jack McCall In Dead Wood, Black Hills, August 2, 1876. Pard, we will meet again in the happy hunting grounds to part no more. Good-bye. Colorado Charlie, C. H. Utter."

In the grave with him are buried all the guns, pistols, belt, etc., that he happened to have when he died.

This instance is only one of the hundreds showing the class of sturdy men with whom Buffalo Bill was associated in his early days and the desperate chances that he and others took in marking the progress of civilization, and the exhibition which he developed to properly illustrate the history of his time and the conditions which will always remain a distinct memory in the minds of those who have had an opportunity to see it. It is greatly to be regretted that our government had not taken some a method to perpetuate its usefulness as an educational institution.

The American Indian.

There is something touchingly pathetic in the melancholy spectacle of the passing of our American Indians, and the episodes which have been a part of western history, from the days of the pony express to the laying of the iron trails from ocean to ocean.

Since Columbus first gave the Indian the tragic touch of civilization up to our own time, men have watched the slow decay of the children of the forest, the first lords of our country's matchless and mighty domain. Step by step with the departing buffaloes and the march of civilization, they have kept a backward pace. There seems to be no power on earth to save the departing red man. His doom seems to be fixed and his day on earth is apparently short. Many writers have found much in our American Indians to commend and much to condemn. He has been primitive in all his moods and by close association, I have noted that his sports and pastimes are almost childlike in their simplicity. The heart and mind of the native Indian is as close to nature as anything I have yet discovered. The simplest trinkets or baubles are to him as precious as gold. I recall several instances where a painted warrior would sacrifice a month’s wages to purchase a fancy colored shawl to throw over the shoulders of his dusky bride, back in the wilderness.

The Indian is serious in expression and action almost to the point of melancholy. Endowed with remarkable patience and perseverence, he rarely forsakes a task once undertaken. His cunning is remarkable and his perception keen; his ears, eyes and sense of touch or smell have ever been far more intense than those of the white man, and whatever may be the variance of opinion as to his merits, virtues or right, all seem to agree that he is slowly, surely going, passing from our midst forever. His course as a race seems to be almost run. The noblest, reminiscence of this romantic people will soon be history.

Curtis's Tribute.

The distinguished historian, Edward S. Curtis, who has already spent over sixteen years of his life in compiling data, making pictures and writing a series of volumes entitled "The North American Indian; a Record of a Vanishing Race," pays a lasting tribute to the Redman. The writer has had the honor of knowing Mr. Curtis for several years, and enjoyed the pleasure of viewing the first volumes of his life's work; twenty huge quarto volumes are contemplated; an equal number of portfolios, containing photographic views of the Indian as he is; at home, on the trail, in the wilderness, and the last crest of the eagle feathers on his war bonnet as he vanishes over the brow of the sunset hill to disappear in the shadow of eternal darkness.

As a foreword to this great book, Julian Hawthorne writes:

"Edward S. Curtis, of Seattle, is a man with red blood in his veins, who has divined once more the ancient truth that the path of the real center of things is by way of the heart and sympathies, and in telling his story of a great race of people which came here - if it were not indigenous - no one knows when, or from where, and is losing existence without our knowing anything of them beyond a few extraordinary facts. Such a thing has never happened before in the history of the world. They muffle themselves in their blankets and disappear over the edge of the hill into the dark valley - then go in silence, taking their secret with them. They fought to hold their own and were overcome. We have hated them and feared them, but we have respected them. We have not understood them and in our ignorance we have misrepresented them. The Creator who made us and them withheld from us the key of their nature and the comprehension of their inner life and motives. During four centuries the white man has faced them and failed to fathom them. The child born today may live to see the last of them vanish. Shall he be compelled to confess that the significance of their presence in the human family is an insoluble problem; that there has been no answer to the question as to what they were or as to why they were? Shall a manifestation of human nature so powerful as this go to annihilation with none to explain it?

"The Pioneer who had struggled with him and the man of science who had probed into him are alike at a loss to interpret this so-called Indian - the aggregate of wandering tribes which are not even named. He was savage and we could not tame him; deep, and we could not sound him; strong, but only to hinder, not to help us. In life and in death he stood as a silent but irreconcilable citizen of our civilization.

"They seem to have their roots in a period so remote that one is inclined to fancy that they may be separated from all human origin by one of those cataclysms, rumored in legend, that destroyed all save a remnant of mankind, which survives to give an obscure hint of what man was before the deluge and then sinks into nothingness with their riddles still unsolved.

"The North American Indian, though he baffles us, has from the outset stimulated our interest and curiosity, and from the time of Captain John Smith down to the present has been the subject of endless gossip, speculation and comment.

"Every frontiersman and trapper has told his anecdotes. Painters have portrayed him; he figures in the books of globetrotters; novelists have romanticized or libeled him; portentious theories have been framed to account for him; still he sits wrapped in his blanket, a bronzed enigma.

"He has been called 'The noble savage,' and likewise, 'Lo, the poor Indian,' the epigramatists insist that the only good Indian is a dead Indian. These and the trivial and shallow epitaphs mark his grave.

"Yet generations of our boys have played Indian in their home pastures and lain in ambush behind stone fences and huckleberry bushes; and such phrases as the tomahawk, warpath, 'happy hunting ground,' the great spirit and the paleface have entered into our common language. The Indian's profile appears upon our coins, and no American group of symbolical sculpture is complete without some part of his figure. It is the power of race. But the Indian is indifferent to all these compliments, and for his own part carries away nothing of ours except some of our diseases and vices, and we are left with an uneasy suspicion that he despises us."

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