The Honorable Cody

by Richard S. Wheeler

  Ah, Cody. It was like a bible snapping shut, this death. Like a gospel ending. Like a novel’s last page. Recollections swarm through my mind. Cody and I are relics of another time, before Curtiss aeroplanes and Ford automobiles and trucks and submarines. And mostly before telephones, too. But those innovations really don’t define what separates the 19th century from the present one. We were a different sort of man, the sort who pioneered a nation before there were bridges across rivers, before telegraph lines, when the wilderness was filled with more than puffball clouds and butterflies. There was more iron in our spines. And now he is lost, and with him the generation that shaped America.

  I knew Colonel Cody by reputation long before I met him. During the Indian wars of the sixties and seventies he scouted, mostly for the Fifth Cavalry under General Carr, and won a reputation as the finest and bravest scout on the borders. As a youth he had been a pony express rider and some of his endurance rides were the stuff of legend. General Carr valued his services so highly he contrived to keep Cody on the army payroll between campaigns, and once even got Cody a hundred dollar bonus for meritorious service, an expense that had to go clear up the chain of command.

  I knew Cody a little back then, during the Sioux war of the Seventies, and I have followed his career ever since. But all that is out of the misty past. I remember something more recent, something more pungent, which gives the true girth of the man, and it suits me now to stare out upon the January snows and recollect old my friend, hearing his warm baritone voice once more in my mind.

  It occurred during the ghost dance uprising in 1890, long after Colonel Cody had established his Wild West and had toured this country and Europe with it. One show season he even had Sitting Bull with him, the great chief and spiritual leader of the Sioux, and Cody’s audiences had the chance to see in person the stocky, muscular, solemn medicine man whose visions had inspired the Sioux along with their allies to leave their reserves and take on the United States Army in a last desperate bid for their liberties.

  There in the arenas of the Midwest and East, performing with the rest of the Wild West, was the one and only Sitting Bull in headdress and leathers, the very man whose passion had led to the destruction of General Custer’s command. There was the fearsome Sitting Bull, plodding around, oblivious to the hisses and the dark scowls of his audience. Cody never did anything by halves, and if he advertised an enactment of Custer’s Last Stand, he wanted those who fought that fight to do the show.

  Colonel Cody and Sitting Bull had become great friends during that tour and they wound up respecting each other too, and that was what I was remembering in 1890 when I commanded the Division of the Missouri from Chicago. Suddenly I needed Colonel Cody and I wired him to meet me in Chicago on business.

  He came at once. We met at the Palmer House and as soon as we had ordered libations I got right down to brass tacks.

  “Colonel, what do you know of the ghost dance?”

  “Very little, General.”

  “Then I’ll enlighten you. There’s an Indian messiah, a Nevada Paiute named Wovoka who spreads a semi-Christian religion among the tribes, which involves the resurrection of Indian power, the end of suffering, and the destruction of whites. They do a special dance, the ghost dance, full of magical business. I won’t go into all that. Colonel, I believe Sitting Bull’s in the middle of it. He’s using the cult to solidify the Sioux, prepare them to abandon their reservations and free themselves to live in the old way.”

  Cody was doubtful. “General, Sitting Bull’s a traditional Sioux. I know him. He’s a medicine man. A priest after a fashion. I can’t imagine the old boy quitting everything he believes in to take up this new hocus-pocus.”

  “Colonel, all the intelligence I’ve received suggests that war's brewing and Sitting Bull’s in the middle of it. I don’t want war. Those wretched people have been starved and cheated by the Indian agents. They don’t get a full ration and they don’t have means to survive. They’re desperate and you know what desperate tribes will do. They’re all looking to Sitting Bull.”

  “Well, tell Congress about it,” he said. “I can’t. The Indian Bureau’s been after my hide for years, saying I abuse the Indians in my show. They’re wards of the government, you know, actually prisoners of war. I want nothing to do with that bureau. They’ve put me through the wringer.”

  He swallowed half a tumbler of amber fluid and began to relax. “I’ve spent a fortune sending my show Indians off to Washington to tell the bureaucrats how I treat them. But the bureau never quits and I just have to deal with more blasted accusations that I'm abusing my redskins. The truth of it is, any Sioux who has seen the white man’s world isn’t going to stir up trouble, and that includes Sitting Bull. He told me that white men are as numerous as the leaves in a forest.”

  I saw my chance. “Then we’ll just do a little maneuver,” I said. “I want you to go out there and fetch Sitting Bull. Get him off the reservation and the trouble will die down. Talk him into it any way you can. If you pull him out of there, there won’t be war. It’s not him I worry about but all the young braves who need him, who’ll pick a fight and claim Sitting Bull for their leader.”

  Cody sipped, and sipped again, and stared into the gas lamps.

  “My old friend Sitting Bull likes candy, especially licorice.” Cody said.

  “You’ll do it?”

  “I can hardly wait, General.”

  “Use discretion.”

  “Sitting Bull’s my friend and we’ll have us a party. He’s traveled the world and I don’t think he’s a bit interested in starting another war. Nelson, that old boy’s seen the elephant. But we can pull him out of there until things quiet down.”

  “I hope you’re right, Bill.”

  “We’ll drink to it,” he said.

  I fitted him out with some orders that would gain him the cooperation of the army, or so I thought. While he downed a tenderloin and two more whiskeys I scratched out a document:

  Confidential

  Headquarters, Division of the Missouri

  Chicago, Ill. November 24, 1890

  Col. Cody,

  You are hereby authorized to secure the person of Sitting Bull and deliver him to the nearest com’g officer of U. S. Troops, taking a receipt and reporting your action.

  Nelson A. Miles

  Major General

  Comd. Division

  Then I took out one of my private cards and wrote this on the back:

  Com’d’g officers will please give Col. Cody transportation for himself and party and any protection he may need for himself and a small party.

  Nelson A. Miles

  Thus equipped, the old scout collected a few of his woolly wowsers from the Wild West, Pony Bob Haslam and White Beaver Powell, a Wisconsin quack doctor who claimed Indian blood, all pals of Sitting Bull, and caught the Northern Pacific passenger train westward, once again on a mission for the United States Army.

  I thought it was a pretty good ploy and might save the country some grief. But I hadn’t counted on the stiff-necked opposition of the Standing Rock Indian agent, a fellow named James McLaughlin, who was horrified when Cody and his friends showed up at the agency and let it be known they were going to visit Sitting Bull.

  McLaughlin was married to a Sioux woman and should have known more of what was happening on that reservation, which straddled the borders of the two Dakotas, but he plainly didn’t. It was his notion that Sitting Bull, having lost his influence among the Sioux, wanted to import a new religion and make himself the high priest of it in order to recover his status.

  Hearing some rumbles about war, he had visited Sitting Bull only days earlier and had seen no signs of it though there was a ghost dance in progress there which the old medicine man neither encouraged nor discouraged, it being the Sioux way to let tribal members follow their own paths. Sitting Bull was simply a traditionalist and would never depart from traditional ways. But I myself didn’t know that then; word reaching Chicago was that war w
as brewing and Sitting Bull was at the center.

  McLaughlin wired the commissioner of Indian Affairs about Cody’s arrival and my plans, thinking the capture of Sitting Bull would surely lead to the very war being whispered about all over the tribal west. McLoughlin swiftly persuaded himself that the whole Sioux nation was about to explode and snatching Sitting Bull would be the match to the tinder. He told Washington, however, that he had matters well in hand and asked that my order be rescinded. He had his own plans in mind, which were to ship Sitting Bull off to prison on the ground that the old shaman had broken the peace pipe. In short, McLaughlin was playing every card, with the purpose of keeping me and my command out of the picture and defeating Cody any way he could.

  He didn’t stop there, either. He secretly contacted the commander at Fort Yates, Lieutenant Colonel Drum, and asked that Drum and his staff find some way to delay Cody. That post was manned by the Eighth Cavalry and Twelfth Infantry, neither regiment at all familiar with the scouting of Buffalo Bill Cody. They thought he was some sort of soft-bellied showman they could manipulate a little. Oh, my, oh my.

  They couldn’t countermand my orders of course, but officers have their own resources and all the shavetails at Yates set out to delay the Cody party until my order could be rescinded from above. Major Generals have pretty good ear trumpets and word soon filtered back to me about what happened. At first I was vexed by this failure to execute my orders promptly, but I hadn’t reckoned on old Buffalo Bill. And neither had all those officers, who didn’t know what sort of man they were dealing with when Colonel Cody arrived, showed them my orders and my card asking them to supply the means of reaching Sitting Bull.

  What they did was arrange a little party for the Hon. William F. Cody. And this is how I’m going to remember old Cody to the end of my life, and what’s going to get a big horselaugh from me every time he comes to mind. Cody, never a man to turn down a party, accepted with delight. All those bored Eighth Cavalry and Twelfth Infantry officers planned to drink Cody under the table. To this end they organized relays, intending that Cody should be kept drinking through several sets of officers, so that the next day or two the old boy would not be fit to travel ten feet from Fort Yates.

  So the elite of the United States Army fetched itself a drinking contest with Buffalo Bill, who knew nothing of the ulterior motive for it and looked upon the occasion with joy. By the end of that memorable evening, or so my confidants inform me with certain relish, Cody was in fine fettle and the whole command of Fort Yates was, shall we say, unfit for duty.

  Well, early the next morning Cody and his party were off in an Army wagon, unaware that Buffalo Bill had administered one of the great drubbings of modern times to the prestige and morale of the corps, having singlehandedly flattened a dozen officers. As it turned out, my order was indeed rescinded and the hung-over command swiftly sent a party out to intercept Cody. That was the end of it. Cody never did see Sitting Bull.

  But I wish he had. For what followed was deepest tragedy. McLaughlin sent his Indian police to arrest Sitting Bull and the result was a slaughter. Sitting Bull was killed and so were others, and that precipitated one of the darkest chapters in our history, the butchery at Wounded Knee.

  But I smile when I think of old Bill.

  (From a memoir of Colonel William F. Cody)

  Oh, what a fine bunch of officers I met at Fort Yates. When we rolled in there, why, there was Lieutenant Colonel William Drum himself, welcoming us, shaking hands, clapping me on the back, and seeing to our comforts. So pleased were they to see us that they announced a great party in our honor that very eve, and we accepted at once. I had with me two old pals of Sitting Bull, Pony Bob Haslam and White Beaver Powell, stalwarts of the Wild West. Powell had a little Indian blood coursing his veins, which would help. Of course I also had a mountain of candy for Sitting Bull. The chief broke into smiles whenever he got himself a little sweet. Between us, we intended to persuade the great medicine chief to come with us back east for a while.

  Well, that party was the most splendid affair ever seen at Fort Yates, Dakota Territory. The post was located on the right bank of the Missouri and was the headquarters of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. It had been named for Captain George Yates, Seventh Cavalry, who had perished at the Little Big Horn. We hightailed over there after talking with that odd duck, Agent McLaughlin, who didn’t seem very happy to see us. But they certainly welcomed us at Fort Yates, and that’s why I am fond of the United States Army and its sterling officers. We were guests of honor, and the whole officer corps there, save for those on duty, eventually showed up to shake hands with us. Those fine fellows divided up the post command duty so that they could all get to the party in relays.

  They had gotten themselves up in dress uniforms, set linen on the table, uncorked their finest whiskey, their Christmas Eve bottles, and begged me to tell them some stories, so indeed I did. We talked about the times when I scouted for General Carr and the Fifth Cavalry and about the summer of 1876 when we sought to avenge the Custer defeat, and my fight with Yellow Hand, whose real name, I explained, was Yellow Hair, a big, tough subchief of the Cheyenne. I told all this as modestly as I could for I was among skilled professional officers, always giving credit to General Carr and his staff for the great successes of that campaign.

  I discovered they wanted to know all about Sitting Bull, so I set out to persuade them that the old medicine chief, my fine friend and colleague in the Wild West, was a man of dignity and courage. I reminded them that Sitting Bull had seen the white man’s world, its cities, its power, and that he would never dream of war again, having discovered with his own eyes what lay to the east.

  The officers were impressed by my reasoning and kept asking me more questions. Of course I told them, in confidence, that it was Miles’s intent that we would spirit Sitting Bull to safety and that would quiet the unrest on the reservation. The young warriors who hoped to rally around Sitting Bull and fight once again would be disappointed, to which these blue-coated officers nodded sagely and filled my glass again. My goodness, how they looked after us that evening. That was the finest, smoothest aged whiskey I have ever sipped west of the Mississippi, and I knew how much it had cost them.

  I’ve never seen such hospitality among underpaid junior officers. Their concern for our creature comforts was unequaled by any command, and I responded by toasting the Eighth Cavalry and Twelfth Infantry, their wives, their children, their cavalry mounts, and family dogs. They responded with such good cheer that we went through a dozen toasts. They toasted the Wild West, old Buffalo Bill, Pony Haslam, and White Beaver Powell, not to mention three cheers for Sitting Bull himself.

  Well, after one team of officers had to abandon the party with profound regrets, and report for duty, the next team arrived, and we started the toasts all over again. I think those fellows will never forget what a fine party we all had. I went to bed about two in the morning thinking I’d never had such a splendid evening. I was up at dawn, got the wagon and horse from the stables, and we set off bright and early for Mr. Sitting Bull’s residence, but ere long a courier caught up with us. The plan had been aborted. I never got the whole story of it but there was some sort of fight between the army and the Bureau of Indian Affairs and General Miles got overruled. I turned around, returned the wagon to Fort Yates, and asked them to deliver my gifts of candy to Sitting Bull. It had come to nothing and we caught the train east. The officers were all indisposed, claiming to have headaches, and no one saw us off. It was an odd way to greet us after such a splendid party.

  If I had known the ending of that story, I think I would have continued on to my friend Sitting Bull and urged him to come with us for his own safety.

  Nelson Miles and I remained fast friends over the years and oft was the time when I invited him to my Pahaska Teepee in Wyoming, and we poured a few drinks and reminisced about the Indian Wars and our role in them. He was always most gracious to me, acknowledging my services. He endorsed the Wild West, and
that stamp of approval from the commanding general of the army was a great help. Not only did he endorse my show but when I proposed some movies made from chapters in my own life a few years ago, including Wounded Knee, why, there he was at my side, summoning the resources of the United States Army, to reenact that tragic fight. I’ve never known a finer gentleman.

  (From the posthumous memoir of Colonel William F. Cody)

  Of all the good people treading the earth, I owe my success foremost to my beloved Louisa, and after that to Major John Burke, the splendid press agent, publicist, actor, and manager who has been with me the better part of four decades.

  It has been said, especially by the Wild West’s backers, that Burke spent lavishly. He did that. He took newsmen to dinner, always bought them a few rounds of drinks, saw to it that the broadsheets were plastered on every wall ahead of our show, saw to the publication of a host of dime novels whose hero bore my name. I could not recognize myself or any shred of my life in any of those tales, but it didn’t matter: the purpose was to take the name of Buffalo Bill and spread it before the whole world, and for Burke it didn’t matter whether the Buffalo Bill of fiction and myth and publicity was the same man as the one residing inside my flesh.

  Now, a man gets used to seeing his name preceded by glowing adjectives or seeing his personal history subtly enlarged and improved, and I really can’t fault him for it. And yet, as age crept into me I found myself wondering whether anyone on earth know the real Bill, the one inhabiting my flesh, and not the one who had been created the way a sculptor creates his clay characters.

  Is there too much of a good thing in press publicity? I have wondered about it. For years now, as I weather the seasons I’ve noticed that no one believes anything about me; they say it’s all lies and exaggerations. So I have paid a price for the masterful operations of my old friend, companion, manager, advance man, press agent and occasional actor. I think on this and feel a strange loss, for here I am at the height of my fame and yet I am filled with sadness because all those millions who know Buffalo Bill don’t really know me.