105. North, Man of the Plains, 102–3, 126.
106. King, “Republican River Expedition,” 174–75; North, Man of the Plains, 103–4.
107. “Journal of the March of the Republican River Expedition,” entry for June 15, Ra 533 Reel 7, NSHS; King, “Republican River Expedition,” 179; Cody, Life of Buffalo Bill, 251–53; North, Man of the Plains, 107–8. For the Fetterman fight, see Utley, Frontier Regulars, 93–110.
108. Cody later claimed to have killed thirty-six buffalo during a hunt at this point in the expedition. No other source confirms that number. Cody, Life of Buffalo Bill, 253. Frank North records a hunt in “Journal of an Indian Fighter,” 133.
109. King, “Republican River Expedition,” 198–99; “Journal of the March,” entry for July 10.
110. Cody, Life of Buffalo Bill, 255; “Journal of the March,” entry for July 11; Bvt. Maj. Gen. E. A. Carr to Bvt. Brig. Gen. Geo. D. Ruggles, July 20, 1869, RG 533, U.S. Army Continental Command, Dept. of the Platte, Letters Recd. 1867–69, Microfilm Reel 6, NSHS; Price, Across the Continent with the Fifth Cavalry, 137–41. Also see North, Man of the Plains, 113–14; Grinnell, Two Great Scouts, 194–95.
111. King, “Republican River Expedition, June–July 1869: pt. II, The Battle of Summit Springs,” 289.
112. Pen-and-ink drawing in BBWW 1884 program (Hartford, CT: n.p., 1884); cover illustration on BBWW 1888 program (Hartford, CT: Calhoun, 1888), BBHC.
113. Cody, Life of Buffalo Bill, 260–61.
114. Carr to Ruggles, July 20, 1869; North, Man of the Plains, 117; Grinnell, Two Great Scouts, 198–99; Joyce Szabo, Howling Wolf and the History of Ledger Art (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1994), 154; Hyde, Life of George Bent, 334; also West, Contested Plains, 314–15, 378, n. 88, and King, War Eagle, 115. The regimental journal recorded Tall Bull “was killed after a desperate personal defence.” “Journal of the March,” entry for July 11.
115. Price, Across the Continent with the Fifth Cavalry, 138.
116. Bvt. Brig. Gen. Thomas Duncan to Lt. Wm. G. Forbush, Dist. of the Republican, Oct. 7, 1869, RG 533, Reel 7, NSHS.
117. Buffalo Bill: The King of Border Men originally appeared in serial form between Dec. 23, 1869, and March 3, 1870. See William J. Roba, ed., Buffalo Bill: The King of Border Men (Davenport, IA: Service Press, 1987). For Cody’s meeting with Buntline, see Cody, Life of Buffalo Bill, 263.
118. Michael Denning, Mechanic Accents: Dime Novels and Working-Class Culture in America, rev. ed. (New York: Verso, 1998), 10–16.
119. “Memorandum,” March 20, 1924, in W. F. Cody 201 File, RG 407, NARA.
120. WFC testimony, March 23, 1904, pp. 9, 27.
121. King, “Republican River Expedition”; North, Man of the Plains, 115.
122. Knight, Life and Manners in the Frontier Army, 39–70; for an eyewitness account of how much officers’ wives shaped fort culture, see Duane Merritt Greene, Ladies and Officers of the United States Army; or, American Aristocracy (Chicago: Central Publishing Co., 1880).
123. See the photograph in Rosa and May, Buffalo Bill and His Wild West, 41; for carpet, see May Cody Bradford testimony, Folder, 7–1, in CC pp. 106–7.
124. Louisa Burke testimony, Feb. 19, 1905, Civil Case 970, Folder 8, p. 111; Eric Ericson testimony, p. 24; Mrs. Charles Hendy, Sr., testimony, Folder 8, p. 95; all in CC; Kit Carson Cody birthdate in Cody, Life of Buffalo Bill, 275; Russell, Lives and Legends of Buffalo Bill, 160; quote from Ena Raymonde, entry for July 10, 1872, see also entry for Oct. 11, 1872, Ena Raymonde Ballantine Journal, MS 1730, NSHS.
125. Capt. Charles J. Meinhold, 3rd Cavalry, to Lt. J. B. Johnson, Post Adjutant, April 27, 1872, and attached copies of expedition reports, recommendations, and approvals, in Case File for Correction of Military Record: William Cody, Stack 8W3, 4/8/2, Box 10, RG 94, NARA, Washington, DC; also Adjutant General’s Office, document file 377, 592 (William Cody), Stack 8W3, 12/1/D, Box 2609, NARA, Washington, DC.
126. “Sharp Pursuit of Indian Thieves,” New York Times, June 9, 1870.
127. “Sheridan’s Buffalo Hunt,” New York Times, Oct. 7, 1871, p. 11.
128. “The Grand Duke’s Hunt—General Sheridan and ‘Buffalo Bill’ Lead the Way—At Grand Battue on the Plains,” New York Herald, Jan. 14, 1872, p. 7.
129. Capt. Charles J. Meinhold, 3rd Cavalry, to Lt. J. B. Johnson, Post Adjutant, April 27, 1872, and attached copies of expedition reports, recommendations, and approvals, in Case File for Correction of Military Record: William Cody, Stack 8W3, 4/8/2, Box 10, RG 94, NARA, Washington, DC; also Adjutant General’s Office, document file 377, 592 (William Cody), Stack 8W3, 12/1/D, Box 2609, NARA, Washington, DC. Note that Meinhold’s report spells the name “Volks,” but official records list the man as “Vokes.”
130. The Congressional Medal of Honor: The Names, the Deeds (Forest Ranch, CA: Sharp & Dunnigan, 1984), 1, 4–5. It was perfectly in keeping with the low status of the award that, even with so colorful a recipient as Buffalo Bill, the press seems not to have noticed. Despite press coverage of various Buffalo Bill hunts and skirmishes, I have yet to find a newspaper report of the commendation.
131. Quote from Cody to Friends in Rochester, Aug. 9, 1872 [1874], MS 6 I:B, BBHC; Anson Mills, My Story, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: Byron S. Adams, 1921), 151; Anson Mills, “Big Horn Expedition, Aug. 15 to Sept. 30, 1874, commanded by Capt. Anson Mills,” pamphlet (n.p., n.d.).
132. Quoted in King, War Eagle, 154. For departure from stage, see Sagala, Buffalo Bill, Actor, 136–37.
133. “The Indian Campaign,” New York Times, Aug. 17, 1876, p. 5.
134. Description of Cody’s costume from Charles King, Campaigning with Crook (Milwaukee: The Sentinel Co., 1880), 38; “most reliable account” from Chris Madsen, who gave it to Don Russell, “Buffalo Bill’s Fight,” MSS in MS 62 Don Russell Collection, Series 1:R, Military, Box 7/4, BBHC. Cody, Life of Buffalo Bill, 343–44; see also “Diary of James Frew,” MS 58, Box 1, Misc. p. 1, NSHS.
135. Many accounts of the battle incorrectly refer to southern Cheyennes. Yellow Hair was from the northern Cheyenne band of Little Wolf, who were then living near Red Cloud Agency, on the Sioux Reserve. Beaver Heart added “Furthermore, Yellow Hair was not killed by any one man as far as I could see, as the whole two troops of soldiers were firing at him. If Buffalo Bill was with those soldiers he stayed with them until Yellow Hair was killed, and he did not come out and engage Yellow Hair single-handed.” From E. A. Brininstool, “Who Killed Yellow Hand?,” Outdoor Life—Outdoor Recreation, Feb. 1930, typescript in MS 62 Don Russell Collection, Series 1:R, Military, Box 7/8, BBHC. See also “Statement of Josie Tangleyellowhair Regarding Killing of Yellow Hair (Yellow Hand) on War Bonnet Creek,” May 27, 1929, MS 58, Box 1, Folder 1, NSHS.
136. For army partisans, see Don Russell, Lives and Legends, 236; for Cheyenne numbers and Merritt’s report, see Paul Hedren, First Scalp for Custer: The Skirmish at War Bonnet Creek, Nebraska, July 17, 1876, 58–59, 78; for quote, see Carr, “Memoirs,” 127, and King, War Eagle, 162.
137. WFC to Louisa Cody, July 18, 1876, on display in the Buffalo Bill Museum, BBHC. The text is reprinted in “Buffalo Bill Yarn Is Verified Here,” Baltimore Sun, Morning Edition, Dec. 21, 1936, clipping in MS 62 Don Russell Collection, Series 1:R, Military, Box 7/9, BBHC; see also Russell, Lives and Legends of Buffalo Bill, 230. The controversy over whether or not Cody killed Yellow Hair has consumed forests. See Don Russell, “Captain Charles King,” The Westerners New York Posse Brand Book 4, no. 2 (1957): 39; also MS 62 Don Russell Collection, Series 1:R, Box 7, Folders 1–12, BBHC. There is also a file with hundreds of letters on this question in the Cody materials at the NSHS.
138. Cody, Life of Buffalo Bill, 355.
139. DeBarthe, Life and Adventures of Frank Grouard, xvii; Edgar I. Stewart, “Frank Grouard,” in The Reader’s Encyclopedia of the American West, ed. Howard R. Lamar (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1977), 172; Evan S. Connell evaluates the Grouard controversy in Son of the Morning Star, 327–28. See also John S.
Gray, “Frank Grouard: Kanaka Scout or Mulatto Renegade,” Chicago Westerner’s Brand Book 16, no. 8 (1959); Russell, Lives and Legends, 239–40.
140. Field diary of Gen. A. H. Terry, entry for Aug. 10, 1876, in The Field Diary of General Alfred H. Terry—The Yellowstone Expedition, 1876, ed. Michael J. Koury (Bellevue, NE: Old Army Press, 1970), 31.
141. Burt’s authorship is discussed in Sagala, Buffalo Bill, Actor, 162; his participation in the 1876 campaign is in Finerty, War-Path and Bivouac, 112, 117, 164.
142. King, Campaigning with Crook, 32.
143. King, Campaigning with Crook, 34. For New York Herald, see “The Indian War,” New York Herald, July 23, 1876, p. 7, col. 3; King’s authorship is discussed in Charles King to W. J. Ghent, March 18, 1929, in MS 62 Don Russell Collection, Series 1:R, Military, Box 7/7, BBHC. For King and Cody as drinking partners, see CSS of Don Russell and Paul Hedren in MS 62 Don Russell Collection, Series 1:R Military, Box 7, BBHC.
144. The Buffalo Bill Combination performed May Cody and other plays in Milwaukee, Jan. 1–3, 1878. Sagala, Buffalo Bill, Actor, 318, 337.
145. King, Campaigning with Crook, 36. Merritt’s report at the battle says an Indian was killed. See Hedren, First Scalp for Custer, 78. King’s account was so colorful, and fanciful, that Chris Madsen, a Fifth Cavalry veteran who was at Warbonnet Creek, once wrote, “I can not understand why King would write such stuff about a fight where there was plenty to tell without going Munchauson [sic] one better.” Chris Madsen to Fred P. Todd, April 8, 1938, MS 62 Don Russell Collection, Series 1:R Military, Box 7/4, BBHC.
146. Emphasis added. The letter is reproduced in Life of Buffalo Bill, iv.
147. Carr to Ruggles, July 20, 1869; Carr in Cody, Life of Buffalo Bill, vii. For Cody’s request for endorsement, Carr’s warning against “embroidery,” and his attendance at the show, see Carr, “Memoirs,” 36–38, also 218; for Carr’s career, see King, War Eagle; also Russell, Lives and Legends, 139–48; for testimonial, see BBWW 1907 program (Buffalo, NY: Courier, 1907), n.p.
148. Charles King (as told to Don Russell), “My Friend, Buffalo Bill,” The Cavalry Journal 41, no. 173 (Sept.–Oct. 1932): 19. Russell provides an account of his meeting with King, and his research for the article, in Don Russell, “A Very Personal Introduction,” in Paul Hedren, First Scalp for Custer, 15–21.
149. May Cody Bradford, Folder 7-1, 119, CC.
150. WFC testimony, March 23, 1904, p. 10.
CHAPTER SIX: BUFFALO HUNT
1. From BBWW 1894 program.
2. Cody, Life of Buffalo Bill, 253.
3. Buffalo Bill and Dr. Carver Wild West, Rocky Mountain, and Prairie Exhibition 1883 Program (Hartford, CT: Calhoun Printing, 1883), n.p.; also, BBWW 1893 program, 13.
4. Cody, Life of Buffalo Bill, 174; William Cody, with John Burke, Story of the Wild West and CampFire Chats (Chicago: Historical Publishing, 1888), 511.
5. Cody, Life of Buffalo Bill, 156–57.
6. Cody, Life of Buffalo Bill, 172.
7. Cody, Life of Buffalo Bill, 171–75.
8. Buffalo Bill and Dr. Carver Wild West program, n.p.; BBWW 1893 program, 12–13; also Cody, Story of the Wild West, 507–11; 536–37.
9. “Buffalo Bill,” n.p., n.d., clipping in WFC Scrapbooks, Stage Play Notices and Reviews, 1875–80, BBHC. See also “That Buffalo Hunt,” n.d., n.p., WFC Scrapbooks.
10. “Both the grown buffalo and the calves, are very frequently driven in this manner to the encampment, where they are readily slaughtered.” Lansford W. Hastings, The Emigrants’ Guide to Oregon and California (1845; rprt. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1932), 9; also Elizabeth B. Custer, Following the Guidon (1890; rprt. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), 119.
11. The only verification of the Comstock hunt comes from Louisa Frederici Cody’s memoirs, which are based entirely on her husband’s autobiography and appear even more fictionalized than his. See Cody and Cooper, Memories of Buffalo Bill, by His Wife, 122–36; Rosa and May, Buffalo Bill and His Wild West, 39–40.
12. Rosa and May, Buffalo Bill and His Wild West, 40.
13. William Comstock was killed in a fight with Cheyenne Indians in 1868. See Rosa and May, Buffalo Bill and His Wild West, 40; Hutton, Phil Sheridan and His Army, 36–38.
14. Richard Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation, 32–62.
15. Earl of Dunraven [Windham Thomas Wyndham-Quin], The Great Divide: Travels in the Upper Yellowstone in the Summer of 1874 (1876; rprt. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), xiii.
16. See Jonathan Culler, “The Semiotics of Tourism,” in Framing the Sign: Criticism and Its Institutions (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 153–67.
17. Roderick Frazier Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, 3rd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982), 108–16.
18. “Home Incidents,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, Nov. 28, 1868, pp. 173–74; see also Theodore R. Davis, “The Buffalo Range,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 38, no. 224 (Jan. 1869): 147–63, at 149.
19. Dippie, Nomad, 48; E. B. Custer, Following the Guidon, 204.
20. Keim, Sheridan’s Troopers on the Borders, 76.
21. Kansas State Record (Topeka), Oct. 20, 1869, quoted in Minnie Dubbs Millbrook, “Big Game Hunting with the Custers, 1869–70,” Kansas Historical Quarterly 41, no. 4 (Winter 1975): 429–53, at 433.
22. Putnam, “A Trip to the End of the Union Pacific,” 197, n. 2.
23. Daniel Justin Herman, Hunting and the American Imagination (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Press, 2001), 1–8; Jacoby, Crimes Against Nature: Settlers, Poachers, Thieves, and the Hidden History of American Conservation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 58; Louis S. Warren, The Hunter’s Game: Poachers and Conservationists in Twentieth-CenturyAmerica (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997).
24. I am borrowing the notion of invented traditions from Eric Hobsbawm, “Introduction: Inventing Traditions,” in The Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 1–14.
25. Elliott West, “Bison R Us: Images of Bison in American History,” MS in author’s possession.
26. John C. Ewers, “Fact and Fiction in the Documentary Art of the American West,” The Frontier Re-examined, ed. John Francis McDermott (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1967), 79–95, at 84–85.
27. William E. Deahl, Jr., “Nebraska’s Unique Contribution to the World of Entertainment,” Nebraska History 49 (1968): 283–98.
28. Washington Irving, A Tour on the Prairies (London: John Murray, 1835), 263–78; William H. Goetzmann, David C. Hunt, Marsha V. Gallagher, and William J. Orr, Karl Bodmer’s America (Lincoln: Joslyn Art Museum and University of Nebraska Press, 1984); Brian W. Dippie, “The Visual West,” 675–705, esp. 682–85, in The Oxford History of the American West, ed. Clyde A. Milner, Carol A. O’Connor, and Martha A. Sandweiss (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); Wayne Gard, The Great Buffalo Hunt (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959), 59–74; Ann Hyde, “Tourist Travel,” and David C. Hunt, “Alfred Jacob Miller,” in The New Encyclopedia of the American West, 699–700, 1117–19; for emigrant bison hunting, Herman, Hunting and the American Imagination, 200–3, and Faragher, Women and Men on the Overland Trail, 84–85, 99–103.
29. St. Louis Democrat, Feb. 17, 1868, quoted in Richard J. Walsh and Milton S. Salisbury, The Making of Buffalo Bill: A Study in Heroics (rprt. 1978; New York, Bobbs-Merrill, 1928), 113.
30. Warren, Hunter’s Game, 13–15; Jacoby, Crimes Against Nature, 58–62; Herman, Hunting and the American Imagination, 122–58. Also, see John Reiger, American Sportsmen and the Origins of Conservation, 3rd ed. (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 1999), 5–104.
31. Webb, Buffalo Land, 149, 453, 458.
32. Davis, “Buffalo Range,” 154, 157.
33. Davis, “Buffalo Range,” 157.
34. Webb, Buffalo Land, 255–56.
35. Davis, “Buffalo Range,” 155.
36. Armes, Ups and Downs of an A
rmy Officer, 179.
37. Custer, My Life on the Plains, 51; Davis, “Buffalo Range,” 155–57; Dippie, Nomad, 50.
38. David D. Smits, “The Frontier Army and the Destruction of the Buffalo: 1865–1883,” Western Historical Quarterly 23, no. 3 (Autumn 1994): 313–38; “At that time the War Department encouraged hunting in the army, not only for the game that would help out the company messes, but because the men hunting would learn more about takeng [sic] care of themselves and their horses, and how creeks and roads were located in the vicinity of the posts, so that when a call would come in from some ranch that hostile Indians were in the vicinity, some one was able to go direct to the place.” Chris Madsen to Don Russell, May 16, 1938, MS 62 Don Russell Collection, Series 1:R Military, Box 7/4, BBHC.
39. Davis, “Buffalo Range,” 154. Their wives and daughters occasionally joined these hunts. Patricia Y. Stallard, Glittering Misery: Dependents of the Indian Fighting Army (Fort Collins, CO: Old Army Press, 1978), 47.
40. Elizabeth Bacon Custer, Following the Guidon, 213–25, and Tenting on the Plains or, GeneralCuster in Kansas and Texas (1895; abridged ed., Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994), 342–43.
41. Dippie, Nomad.
42. Custer, in Dippie, Nomad, 48.
43. George A. Custer, “On the Plains,” Oct. 12, 1867, in Dippie, Nomad, 13.
44. G. Custer to E. Custer, May 2, 1867, from Ft. Hays, Kansas, in The Custer Story: The Life and Intimate Letters of General George A. Custer and His Wife Elizabeth, ed. Marguerite Merington (New York: Devin-Adair Co., 1950), 200.
45. Custer, in Dippie, Nomad, 46–47; in Millbrook, “Big Game Hunting,” 436–37; Utley, Cavalier in Buckskin, 106.
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