The Honorable Cody

by Richard S. Wheeler

  Three days, they told me. I was gone from them three days and they could find no pulse and barely a breath and they thought I hovered next to the spirit-land. Therese was happy to see me again, and smiled, and we talked a little, for by then she knew some Lakota and I knew some French. But they were frightened and I could not explain where I had been and did not want them to know for it was a secret trip. A doctor was with them, and he looked at me and shook his head, and the things that happened were plainly beyond his knowing.

  Then, the vision came true. Yes, it came true! Pahaska, Buffalo Bill, came to Paris to play again, and my hosts took me to him at once. Buffalo Bill was astonished and happy to see me, the lost Lakota Black Elk, and clasped me about the shoulders and I saw delight in his eyes and knew I was safe.

  The English-speaker came too, and translated.

  “Black Elk, I’m so happy to find you again. Would you like to join my show? Or go home?”

  Home. The very thought made my heart fly. “Pahaska, I am sick to go home and all I want is to go back to my people.”

  “Then you’ll go,” he said. “I’ll arrange it.”

  And he did. He gave me a ticket and some money and the Wild West had a big banquet in my honor, for I was lost and then found, and the whole troupe cheered me. I was taken to the iron road, and carried to the sea, and put upon a fire-boat, and crossed safely to my own land in eight days over the dark ocean, and then I rode on the iron rails to Nebraska and Pine Ridge, and then fell into my mother’s lodge, and they were so happy to see me that we all cried. That was the white men’s year of 1889. I had gone farther away from home than any Lakota and had returned, and it was a thing of wonder to all who came to the lodge to see me and listen to all I had to say about the people on the other side of the dark waters, and the Wild West, and Pahaska, who treated me so well and brought me safely to my people.

  I never saw Pahaska again, and that should be the end of my memories, but that is not so. The story continues to unfold in my mind in a strange fashion.

  In those days the People were starved and unhappy because the agents supplied only half the promised rations, and the cattle we were given were so poor and bony there was no meat on them and hardly worth slaughtering. The white men had taken more of our land from us and not enough remained for us to live. I found my powers as a seer of truth had returned when I came back to Pine Ridge and I was able to heal some of the people, although new diseases tore through us and killed many who had been weakened by starvation. Still, it was my purpose to heal and to bring the people together within the sacred hoop of the nation, so I kept on. I worked in the wasichu store and made a little to feed my family. I was of some value to the storekeepers, for I had seen their world and knew enough of it to help in their store and even translate a little. I was paid with a little food to help keep my mother and my brothers and sisters alive.

  But not only the Lakota were suffering. Everywhere, the peoples of the high plains and the mountains and the forests and the deserts were being mistreated and starved, and everywhere those of us confined to a place with an invisible line around it were longing for a better life, for the present life of sickness and longing and hopelessness could scarcely be worse.

  Then we began hearing of a prophet, a messiah of the Paiute people named Wovoka, who had seen mighty visions and in them the promise that a new world was coming, a world in which the wasichu would be swept away forever and the grasses would be green and thick with buffalo, and every one of the people who was living or had lived in the past would be gathered to this bright new land, which would come on a cloud, and we would be united again. The hoop of our Lakota nation, each nation, every nation, would be made new and no one would be hungry.

  We sent emissaries to this Paiute prophet and they received instruction from this man, having to do with the red paint we must wear and the dance we must dance to hasten the start of this new time when no white men would be present upon the lands. And the message was good and true, and the visions were real, and we knew this would happen early in the year of 1891 by the reckoning of the white men.

  Ah, how little did we know that the bad times would suddenly get worse and that the prophet’s dream would perish in the butchery of Wounded Knee. But I did not know that, and spent much time wondering about this new revelation; whether it was true and good. I finally decided it was true and a new world was coming and the hoop of the nation would be whole once again.

  There was much dancing and no agent could stop it. It alarmed the soldiers, as well it should for we had received the great promise of a new life and a new world. They sent police to arrest Sitting Bull, fearing him above all, and in the melee at his camp our great chief was killed and our hearts were hardened. I did not then know that Pahaska, who loved the great medicine chief, had been sent to fetch him away but the bluecoats had thwarted the plan. And thus Sitting Bull perished when he might have lived.

  I was there at Wounded Knee, and the sight of all those of my people, women and children, slaughtered in a gulch for no reason but that they were Lakota, lives on in me and will never go away. They still lie still and bloodied in my vision. I fought the soldiers, but we were few and the soldiers were many and well armed, and in the end our world fell to pieces.

  I think of Pahaska, Buffalo Bill Cody, with fondness, for he had a good heart, but I also think of the end of our times and the beginning of eternal sorrow.

  (From the memoir of Colonel William F. Cody)

  I got my name, Buffalo Bill, from the times when I supplied meat for the railroad builders. It was not easy work. Each day I had to find the buffalo, kill enough for the men in the camp, and haul the meat to the camps. Still, I succeeded where others failed, and by the time I abandoned that employment for better things, I had killed several thousand of the woolly animals. I scarcely gave a thought to the effect of my daily shooting and the slaughter going on around me. I vaguely understood that I was killing the Indian commissary, making them hungry and dependent on white men’s foods if they could get any. About the extinction of the buffalo I gave no thought at all. There were millions. Why even imagine that some day they might all be shot away?

  The hide hunters slaughtered millions for the hides and left the meat to rot. The Indians themselves contributed, in order to trade hides for precious white men’s goods such as rifles and blankets and knives. Then, suddenly, it was all over. There were scarcely any buffalo living. The rancher Charles Goodnight had a few. There were some wood buffalo up in Canada. A handful of ranchers kept some. The noble buffalo was on the verge of extinction.

  The Indians suddenly were dependent on the largesse of the Indian Agency and Congress, and the result was a disaster. Many of our native people simply starved to death while in Washington politics went on and on, oblivious of the terrible dying going on in the reservations.

  When I did think about it, it was with a sense of helplessness. Congress was not going to feed these people who had so recently engaged our army. The Indians were prisoners and could not leave the reservation to hunt. They knew little about agriculture. So they starved and died. Meanwhile, I suddenly needed buffalo for my Wild West; I wanted real, live, healthy buffalo and that meant nurturing a small herd on my North Platte property, which I did. I bought some breeding pairs and nurtured them. Nowadays I know that this herd helped preserve the animal from extinction but I was more interested in livestock for the Wild West than in noble causes.

  In a sense, the Wild West also prevented starvation on the Sioux reservations, simply because the money we paid our Sioux in the show bought beef and groceries for starving families in the Dakotas. I don’t want to take credit for all of that; it was commerce that inspired me, not charity. But I could see that my ability to pay wages to the Sioux was something of great value, and in a way I was fending off mass death until Congress could bestir itself to help the people the army had defeated.

  I wish now I had been a relentless and inspired advocate of Indian causes; that I had taken every o
pportunity to put my friends the Sioux and Pawnee and other tribes into a better life. I wish now I had spoken against the starvation, the abuse, the scandals in the corrupt Indian Agency, and that I had helped.

  I did more for the buffalo than the Indians. At least the millions who viewed my show saw live buffalo and were excited by them and wished them to be preserved. Eventually a federal reserve was created in what is now Montana, and the animals have slowly made a comeback but their numbers are pathetically few and they still are not far from doom.

  I don’t much hold with Indian religion, and I think they will have to abandon it to begin the long road toward prosperity and comfort. I think they should. The obvious solution, as far as I can see, is for them gradually to become like white men. But that is not to say I don’t admire their great and proud traditions. I count myself a friend of all Indians, and regularly welcome them to Scout’s Rest or the Pahaska lodge. If only others felt the way I do, but I can’t remake the world.

  Chapter 23

  Annie Oakley

  As fond as I was of Mr. Cody, I have always felt there was a gulf between us, only half fathomed. I cannot explain all of it to this day, but I understand some of it. I think it might be envy. I am a much better shot than he and he knew it. I could do all his trick shots but he couldn’t do mine. Perhaps rivalry was a part of it. But there was so much more.

  Having a proper woman in the show troubled him more than he would ever admit. He had divided the world into two sorts of women, those respectable ones who sat at home and presided over families, and those less respectable others who traveled in shows or invaded men’s worlds. He could see that Frank and I lived a proper life and avoided the drinking and carousing that was the way for the rest of them. I am a Quaker. I never gave him reason to think that I was other than a lady and perhaps that puzzled him. What was I doing in the hurly-burly world of show business?

  There was something else which he circled around, over and over, but could never bring himself to ask me or discuss. It became clear early on that I was a success and perhaps the hit of the show. I don’t say that for myself, but it is what people told me and I believe them. There William was, he and his partner Nate Salsbury, with an unexpected female star of the Wild West, a demure young lady who ran into the arena, bowed, and won hearts even before she fired her first shot.

  What if I became pregnant? What if I suddenly decided that rearing children came first? How could I guarantee them that I would remain past one season? What if he lost his most important attraction to... childbirth? That consumed him whenever he thought of me. I smile now to think of all the ways that William Cody tried to breech that subject with me; he was much too embarrassed to approach the topic when Frank was around. And yet it was always there, poor Tiddlywinks William trying to open up a topic that was never discussed, at least not by proper women.

  He would come over to our tent, see me sipping tea, and settle himself in a camp chair.

  “Why, ah, Annie, what are your plans?” he might ask. “I mean, over the long run.”

  I usually was embroidering my skirts and blouses at these times, and working the bright floss through the cloth or leather with my thimble, my hands very busy.

  “Why, Mr. Cody, we’re quite happy, earning good money, and have no other plans.”

  “Ah, well, Annie, what if something unexpected should rise up?”

  During those early tête-à-têtes I could not grasp what was worrying him and dismissed his questioning as the fretting of a showman trying to foresee and meet crisis. Then it dawned on me that he suspected that his young female sharpshooter, always girlish in the arena by design but a happily married woman spending each day–-and night-- with her devoted husband, might have reason to abandon the show.

  Of course I would tell him nothing. That was absolutely not his business. Frank and I, we made our accommodation with life long ago. We were both terribly poor and we know the value of every penny. Sharpshooting is a precarious business. There is always someone better. One can pluck daisies one season and walk away empty-handed and empty-hearted the next. One reason we didn’t carouse with the rest of the cast was that we were determined to save every cent, but to spend whatever was necessary on practice. I was earning a hundred dollars a week, a fabulous sum, and we could save nearly all of it, so we did. We would forego children as much as we loved them, because we could not make a living if we had them. We would be free. I would continue to shoot, enter meets, bank our prizes, and collect gold medals.

  But poor William, that sophisticated man of the world, never quite trusted that we would stay on course and I knew he was fully expecting an “accident,” which never happened. And the poor man never caught on to a woman’s ways. Sometimes, when he visited me at certain times, I would be sipping pennyroyal tea, the sure remedy for the very thing that troubled him, but he never knew it and thought I was just indulging in my woman’s preference for an herbal tea. I don’t behave the way actresses do and he could not imagine that I would even know of such remedies. I’m not sure he himself was as worldly as people might suppose. He was always the boy at heart.

  I don’t really think he ever figured it out, and how often I caught him glancing anxiously toward my middle, looking for signs of what he might consider a disaster. So the subject never arose, nor would I have let it be aired, and William fidgeted. I suppose he talked at length with Nate Salsbury about it, and neither of them were ever quite comfortable with my status in the Wild West. Sometimes I would try to talk to Frank about it, especially late at night when I could snug my head into the warm hollow of his shoulder, and Frank would turn silent. He didn’t like me to talk of it, even to him. He was Irish and more puritanical than most of the New England puritans, and even he, so gifted with conversation, would suddenly have nothing to say. So it became a sort of forbidden subject that I could think about but not mention to any male. I was closer to Frank than I had ever been to any other person except for my mother, and it didn’t matter that he had been born across the sea. Never was a man so loving as my husband, and filled with that Irish sweetness of soul that made me adore him from the moment we met.

  As my star rose, and as it became clear to Salsbury and Cody how much their gate receipts depended on a young lady in her twenties who always stayed somewhat apart from the rest of the show, they obviously felt vulnerable. I knew that without me the Wild West might fail. I never really wanted to believe that, because there were so many grand scenes and tableaux, but it was so. The publicity posters gave me top billing, the critics and the press gave me the best stories.

  I practiced relentlessly, adding to my repertoire, learning what audiences liked most. I burnt a lot of powder keeping myself in form. And almost always when I practiced, Frank was beside me, setting up the traps, loading rifles, releasing birds.

  Then one day Mr. Cody and Mr. Salsbury settled their concern their own way. I know that for them it was like purchasing insurance, but for me it was devastating. They hired Miss Lillian Smith, a fifteen-year-old sharpshooter from Coleville, California, and gave her an act. She was very good, rather stocky, and not a bit dainty. She could knock down glass balls with monotonous regularity with her little .22 rifle, and perform other feats of marksmanship. So, suddenly, there were two lady sharpshooters in the Wild West and it took me no time at all to grasp that Lillian was their ace in the hole, a virginal fifteen, closely guarded, safe, just in case.

  It came as a terrible blow to me. I met this creature, whose only wish was to best me at my game, and soon discovered their could be no true friendship, no cheerful rivalry, no sharing of women’s confidences, no warmth or companionship, no sisterly help given or taken. She was western through and through, a bronzed, sun-kissed California ranching girl, brash and good-humored toward men, and full of the conceits of youth. And only fifteen!

  My first thought was that I must look and be younger when I perform. I was twenty-six, but from the day she joined the show I announced that I was twenty, born in 1866, and I i
nsisted that the show’s biographies and publicity be corrected. It might not be exactly true but I will do whatever I must to protect my position and my income because show business is a hard world. Anxiously I studied the looking glass, hunting for signs of my old age, but I didn’t find much. From then on I made a point of looking just as girlish as I could, for there behind me was a girl in her teens who swung her little rifle here and there and dropped whatever she shot at.

  I felt betrayed.

  “Let’s leave here, Frank,” I said. “We can go to the Pawnee Bill Show or something like that.”

  “A hundred dollars a week, guaranteed,” he replied by way of resisting me.

  I surrendered. Frank really wanted me to stay. The Wild West was the king of all road shows and I was its queen. But I didn’t like it any more, especially after that noisy child began telling everyone she would soon be besting me at everything. She never did, never came close.

  But I knew I faced a rival, the sort of new sensation who might just put a seasoned person out of work. We couldn’t afford that. So I did what any veteran sharpshooter would do. Frank and I practiced new tricks, things that not even Miss Lillian Smith, “the California girl,” could manage. One of these was shooting the ace of hearts with a revolver. Frank would hold the card up, and I would drill a hole through the heart. Then, even better, he would hold a card edgewise to me, and I would cut it in two, also with a revolver. He always responded with such a flair, holding the ace of hearts up for all to see, or picking up the two pieces of the severed card and holding them high over his head.