Legends of the Old West - BUFFALO BILL Ep. 2 | “Frontier Hero”

Episode Date: December 20, 2023

Buffalo Bill Cody and his friend/idol Wild Bill Hickok become scouts for the Army after the Civil War. Cody and the Fifth Cavalry fight Cheyenne chief Tall Bull and his Dog Soldiers. And then Cody meets two men who will change his life: Texas Jack Omohundro and Ned Buntline. Texas Jack saves Bill’s life during a battle with Native American warriors, and then the two friends take the plunge into acting in Ned Buntline’s play. Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join Apple users join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes, bingeable seasons and bonus episodes. Click the Black Barrel+ banner on Apple to get started with a 3-day free trial. For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. On YouTube, subscribe to LEGENDS+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: hit “Join” on the Legends YouTube homepage. To purchase an ad on this show please reach out: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

By 1868, Bill Cody was earning the staggering sum of up to $100 a day to kill bison and bring the meat to the railroad workers who were laying track for the Kansas Pacific Railroad. It was more money than he had ever earned, and newspapers across the West started reporting stories of the incredible hunting prowess of 22-year-old Bill Cody. He was so good at his job that the railroad workers dreamed up a little song in his honor, which they sang while they worked. In the song, they called the young hunter Buffalo Bill, a nickname that was somewhat funny at the time, but which stuck with Bill for the rest of his life and will likely last for eternity. He was making enough money to employ a full-time butcher and a camp staff to help him process the meat, cure the hides, and transport hundreds of tons of buffalo. Bill had tried his hand at all kinds of jobs, hoping to make enough money to settle down with

his family, and his prospects had never seemed better. And then, things fell apart. The railroad reached Sheridan, Kansas, a tiny speck of a place in the northwest corner of the state, and the Kansas Pacific informed Bill that their coffers were empty and his services were no longer required. His wife, who didn't want to be married to a hunter anyway, had taken their daughter and moved back to St. Louis to be with her family. She agreed to meet him in Leavenworth, Kansas, but the couple had an awful fight. Bill said later, I didn't think that we would ever have another meeting. We had kind of mutually agreed that we were not suited to each

other. She was as glad to go back to her home as I was to go to the plains. It was a lonely crossroads for Buffalo Bill Cody. He lost his father and older brother before the Civil War. He lost his mother to illness during the war, right before he left to fight. After the war, he failed in several business ventures before finding the one thing he was good at, buffalo hunting. But then he lost that job, which was followed immediately by losing his wife and daughter. With nothing better to do, Bill wandered into Fort Hayes on the Kansas prairie and accepted a job as a detective. He helped local lawmen track down deserting soldiers and the stolen horses and mules they took with them.

He was surprised when the deputy marshal from Junction City showed up to lead the outfit, and he found the man to be his old friend, James Butler Hickok, the man they now called Wild Bill. From Black Barrel Media, this is Legends of the Old West. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season we're telling the story of William F. Cody, known as Buffalo Bill, the man who turned the American frontier into the Wild West. This is Episode 2, Frontier Hero. Wild Bill had been in and out of Bill Cody's life many times. Hickok's parents had been abolitionists, and Hickok had been involved in the Free State Kansas movement

at about the same time as Cody's father, Isaac. Hickok was then riding with Free State leader Jim Lane, and young Bill Cody might have met him when he delivered messages to his father, who sought the safety of Lane's militia. Cody's sister Julia remembered Hickok visiting the family after Isaac's death, when Bill was only 12. Bill Cody had always looked up to Hickok, seeing him as something between an older brother and the father he had lost. Now, at what must have seemed like the lowest point of Cody's life, Hickok came riding in once more. It would prove to be a turning point. A Harper's Monthly article about Hickok had turned the handsome lawman into a larger-than-life folk hero,

mixing elements of his real history with the tall tales he told the reporter. Within months, dime novels about the frontier adventures of Wild Bill were printed, and readers who had never left their hometowns knew who was the law in Kansas. Wild Bill played into the attention, growing his hair long, showing off his skills with pistols to anyone who would watch, and making sure his face was the first visitors saw when they stepped off their trains at the local station. And so, like boys have done since time out of mind, Bill Cody started to imitate Wild Bill.

Cody grew out his hair, wore fringed buckskins, and adopted the wide-brimmed hats favored by the older man. Cody started finding work in Hickok's chosen profession as a scout. Hickok was a lawman, but most of the money he earned was from serving as a guide for parties, both military and civilian, moving across the wilderness in the American West. In Hickok's case, giving tourists the version of himself they expected from the Harper's monthly story made financial sense. Bill Cody took note and learned the lesson well. Within months, Cody was hired as a scout for the 10th U.S. Cavalry for $60 a month. By September of 1868, he was doing the same job out of Fort Larnd for $75 a month. Cody excelled as a

scout, and General Eugene Carr said, he never seemed to tire and was always ready to go in the darkest night or the worst weather. His eyesight is better than a good field glass, and he is the best trailer I ever heard of. He is always in the right place and his information is always reliable. As Cody's reputation grew, so did the estimation in which he was held by the top military brass. He rode 65 miles to Fort Hayes in one day in 1868 with a dispatch for General Phil Sheridan.

Sheridan read the dispatch and learned that a group of Comanche and Kiowa were en route and were likely to attack local settlements. Sheridan needed someone to take an urgent dispatch to Fort Dodge to warn them of the danger. Bill Cody volunteered to ride the 95 miles to Dodge through some of the most dangerous terrain on the frontier, and then he doubled back to Fort Larne with another dispatch. He rode 350 bone-jarring miles in just under 60 hours. Sheridan was impressed with Bill's endurance and abilities and appointed him as chief of scouts

for the 5th Cavalry. In the fall of 1868, Bill went north with the 5th from Fort Hayes. They fought Cheyenne, Sioux, and Arapaho warriors under Chief Tall Bull of the fabled Cheyenne Dog Soldiers. The 5th pursued Tall Bull's men throughout the fall but lost track of them near the end of October 1868. Cody followed the cavalry to Fort Wallace and then Fort Lyon in Colorado, where he spent the winter of 1868. That winter, Buffalo Bill Cody and Wild Bill Hickok convinced a passing wagon master to trade his cargo, several barrels of beer, for a share in the profits they intended to make selling the beer to soldiers in camp. Cody said,

This is one of the biggest beer jollifications I ever had the misfortune to attend. Cody and Hickok and some of their scouts got into a fight with some of the Mexican and Mexican-American scouts. The commanding officer, General Eugene Carr, was not happy that his soldiers were drunk and his scouts were fighting. He was also upset that the soldiers were hungry and suffering from scurvy, so he sent Bill Cody out on a mission. There was certainly a need, but there also might have been a little punishment in it, though also maybe an opportunity for redemption after the beer jollification. If there was, in fact, an element

of challenge to it with the possibility of redemption, Bill Cody passed with flying colors. As a podcast network, our first priority has always been audio and the stories we're able to share with you. But we also sell merch, and organizing that was made both possible and easy with Shopify. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell and grow at every stage of your business, from the launch your online shop stage all the way to the did we just hit a million orders stage. Whether you're selling scented soap or offering outdoor outfits, Shopify helps you sell everywhere. They have an all-in-one e-commerce platform and in-person POS system, so wherever and

whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With the internet's best converting checkout, 36% better on average compared to other leading commerce platforms, Shopify helps you turn browsers into buyers. Shopify has allowed us to share something tangible with the podcast community we've built here, selling our beanies, sweatshirts, and mugs to fans of our shows without taking up too much time from all the other work we do to bring you even more great content. And it's not just us. Shopify powers 10% of all e-commerce in the U.S. Shopify is also the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and millions of other entrepreneurs of every size across 175 countries.

Because businesses that grow, grow with Shopify. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash realm, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash R-E-A-L-M now to grow your business no matter what stage you're in. Shopify dot com slash realm. General Carr sent Bill out with 20 wagons to kill and butcher fresh meat. Four days out from the fort, Buffalo Bill found a herd of bison. Over the next four days, he killed nearly 20 animals. His shoulder was so black and blue from the butt of the rifle kicking back with every shot that he had to ask for help putting on his coat.

The troops were well fed, and despite the incident with the beer and the fight between the scouts, General Carr was impressed with the services of Buffalo Bill Cody. When the campaign ended, the other scouts were dismissed, but Bill was kept on. He requested leave to go to St. Louis to visit his wife and daughter for the first time since his big fight with Louisa. The couple reconciled, and Louisa was happy to hear that her husband was earning a respectable wage of $125 per month for his service as a scout. It was less money than he had made as a buffalo hunter, but it was a position that commanded much more respect from her family, her neighbors, and her social circle.

Bill also told her that the 5th Cavalry was being moved to Fort McPherson near North Platte, Nebraska. He invited Louisa and their daughter Arta to meet him there, where they would try to rebuild their family at a new home. In May of 1869, Bill and the 5th Cavalry left their former headquarters at Fort Lyon, Colorado, and marched toward Fort McPherson, Nebraska. The 5th fought two skirmishes with Sioux and Cheyenne warriors before they reached their new home, and Bill earned high praise and a $100 bonus for his actions in both engagements. And while Bill and the Fifth were leaving southern Colorado and skirmishing on their way to Fort

McPherson, Tall Bull's Cheyenne Dog soldiers were carrying out a war against settlers in northern Kansas. They were joined by several bands of Sioux and Arapaho warriors, and they attacked crews working on the Kansas Pacific Railroad, burned homesteads, and killed several settlers. In one of their raids, the dog soldiers abducted two German women and the infant child of one of the women. As they fled, the dog soldiers killed the baby and left it behind. General Phil Sheridan knew the warriors had the two white women and knew they were headed north. He sent word to Fort McPherson and ordered the 5th Cavalry to pursue. Bill Cody was chief of scouts and was joined by brothers Frank and Luther North, who were charged with commanding the 150 or so Pawnee scouts who joined the 400 soldiers of the 5th Cavalry.

The combined force pursued the Cheyenne for several weeks but grew exhausted as they endured a forced march across the sand hills, where the lack of grass and water slowed the pursuit. On July 11, 1869, Cody and a few of the best Pawnee scouts were sent to track the dog soldiers and soon brought word that they had found the village. General Carr divided his command into three columns and gave orders that were quickly becoming standard operating procedure for attacks on Native American villages. One column would go for the horses and drive them away from the village so the warriors couldn't get to their mounts.

One column would attack the camp directly, and the last column would circle around behind the camp and cut off avenues of escape. The wind howled as the three columns raced toward Tall Bull's village. It masked the sounds of the pounding horses, and the tall sand hills hid the soldiers from view until they were just half a mile from the camp. As a result, the villagers had virtually no warning that they were in danger. Several prominent warriors with

great names like Black Sun, Lone Bear, and Pile of Bones took up defensive positions, but they were quickly overrun. Tall Bull, with members of his family and a group of warriors, found cover in a ravine, but they, too, were quickly overwhelmed by the assault. Tall Bull was killed during the attack, and both Buffalo Bill and Frank North claimed to have been the killer. The engagement was done in a matter of minutes, and it was a to have been the killer. The engagement was done in a matter of minutes, and it was a complete rout by the cavalry. According to General Carr's report, 52 villagers were killed, and 17 women and children were captured, along with 300 horses and mules. As a military engagement, it was a cavalry success. Only one trooper was injured and none were killed.

As a rescue mission, it was only half successful. One of the two German women was murdered by the Cheyenne right before the battle began, and the other was shot but survived. The fight would go down in history as the Battle of Summit Springs, and it would be a story that Bill Cody loved to tell, both in the immediate aftermath and in the years to come. Fourteen years in the future, he would heavily embellish the action and make it the finale of his Wild West show. Despite Cody's claims, no one knows for sure who killed Chief Tall Bull. The two most likely suspects are Frank North and Buffalo Bill Cody,

but it's also possible that another soldier or a Pawnee scout fired the fatal shot. In Cody's version, of course, from the day it happened through the run of his Wild West show, he was the hero. When the 5th Cavalry returned to North Platte, Cody told the tale to the man who would soon be one of his closest friends. The man was a former Confederate scout and spy turned trail-driving cowboy called Texas Jack Omohundro. Texas Jack was working as a saloon keeper in a bar of a local rancher named Lou Baker, and the joint was Bill's favorite watering hole. Bill and Jack were in the bar that August, a few weeks after the Battle of Summit Springs, when they struck up a conversation with a visitor who would change their lives forever. He was a popular newspaper writer,

a traveling novelist, and a sometime temperance speaker named Ned Buntline. And he was also a liar, a cheater, a philanderer,ane Carroll Judson, was one of the most successful and widely read writers of his day, second in readership only to Mark Twain. He was returning east from a temperance lecture trip to California when he stopped in North Platte. Buntline had read the Harper's Monthly piece on Wild Bill Hickok and was thinking about writing a novel about the gunslinger. But when Buntline had found Hickok drinking in a bar, he rushed toward him shouting, there's my man, I want you. Hickok had drawn his revolver on the writer before letting him know

that he wouldn't be granting an interview. Shaken, Buntline was now drinking in Lou Baker's saloon, where he happened upon Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack. Hickok had refused to give the novelist a story, but these two men seemed happy to fill the writer's ear with tales of cattle stampedes and Indian skirmishes, including Bill's latest encounter with Tall Bull and the Cheyenne Dog Soldiers. The next day, Buntline tagged along with Buffalo Bill on a hunt. And when Buntline left North Platte, Nebraska the next week,

he had already written and shared his first short story about Buffalo Bill by the time the train arrived in Des Moines, Iowa. Within six months, a longer, serialized dime novel titled Buffalo Bill, King of the Border Men, was published in the New York Weekly. The increased exposure from newspaper accounts of his involvement in the campaign against the dog soldiers and Buntline's dramatic stories meant more people sought out Buffalo Bill as a hunting guide and a scout. Just like tourists arriving in Kansas had looked for Wild Bill Hickok a few

years earlier, new arrivals in North Platte, Nebraska began to seek out Buffalo Bill Cody. The newfound success also meant that his wife Louisa and their daughter Arta were arriving in a much better situation at their new home in Nebraska than the one they had left in Kansas. Within a month or so, Bill's sisters Helen and May joined Bill, Louisa, and their daughter and reunited the family Bill had lost several years earlier. Soon, Louisa Cody was pregnant with a son. Bill toyed with the idea of naming the boy Elmo Judson Cody after Ned Buntline, but eventually settled on naming his son Kit Carson Cody after the famous scout. Because of the attention focused on him by Ned Buntline's

dime novels, reports on Buffalo Bill's frequent encounters with native warriors began to appear in Eastern newspapers like the New York Times. Buffalo Bill was almost always accompanied by his friend Texas Jack on both his scouts and hunting trips, and everyone seemed to want in on the action. They chased Sioux horse thieves and led hunting parties with General Phil Sheridan, as well as New York newspaper publishers. Bill and Jack were the celebrities of the frontier prairie, and they were about to welcome their most important guest to date. In the winter of 1872, train schedules were cleared as a special train full of top military brass and foreign dignitaries sped toward the Nebraska frontier. Grand Duke Alexei Alexandronov, son of Tsar Alexander II of Russia, was on the train, enjoying the opulence of his specially

designed Pullman sleeper car. In America, to solidify diplomatic ties between the two countries, the Grand Duke was heading for Nebraska to hunt buffalo. Commanding General of the United States Army, William Tecumseh Sherman, selected General Sheridan to accompany the Duke on the hunt, and Sheridan was joined by General Edward Ord and Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer. Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack planned the hunt. They coordinated with Sioux Chief Spotted Tail, who had been by Red Cloud's side just four years earlier as the two leaders waged war against the U.S. Army in Wyoming. Now, Red Cloud and Spotted Tail lived on reservations, or agencies as they were called back then, in the northwest corner of Nebraska, about 150 miles from Cody's home in North Platte. When the Grand Duke arrived at, quote, Camp Alexie, headquarters for the hunt and named in his honor, he was pleased to see 265 Sioux teepees stretching across the horizon.

Maybe because Bill had recently led New York Herald publisher James Gordon Bennett on a buffalo hunt, the reporter from the Herald who was sent to cover the Grand Duke's hunt painted Buffalo Bill as the foremost scout on the American frontier. Easterners could now read the real-life exploits of Buffalo Bill Cody in their newspapers in the morning and then the fantastic stories of the fictionalized version in Ned Buntline's dime novels that night. Readers knew that some of what they were reading was true and some was fiction, but they never quite knew where the line was between reality and imposture. Under the watchful eye of Buffalo Bill, Grand Duke Alexei used his favorite rifle, a.50-caliber

Springfield he dubbed Lucretia Borgia, after the famous play, to take down his first buffalo. Newspaper coverage secured Alexei's place as a bona fide hunter and Buffalo Bill's place as a legend of the American West. By the spring of 1872, Buffalo Bill added a Medal of Honor to his list of accolades. A band of many Kanju Sioux warriors raided McPherson Station, the telegraph post nearest to Fort McPherson, and escaped with a small herd of government horses. The army went in pursuit, with Buffalo Bill and his partner

Texas Jack as the scouts. The two scouts tracked the raiders across the Nebraska Prairie until they discovered the camp. They split the military force into two, with Bill taking the smaller group to circle around the Sioux and Texas Jack staying back with the main force. Before Bill could get his men into position, gunfire erupted. Buffalo Bill was aiming at one of the warriors with his rifle when he felt a sudden searing pain streak across his scalp. He reached up and could feel blood pouring from a wound. He jerked his rifle in the direction the shot had come from and saw the man who had shot him. The warrior was clutching his chest in agony as he fell to the ground. 125 yards away, smoke rose from the barrel of Texas Jack's rifle. Jack had seen the warrior aiming for Cody and,

in a single motion, had raised and fired his weapon. Texas Jack's lightning-fast shot had knocked the warrior off his mark at the perfect moment, and the bullet that was intended to kill Buffalo Bill only grazed his scalp. When all was said and done, the horses were recovered, most of the warriors were captured, and Buffalo Bill was awarded a Medal of Honor for gallantry in action. And then, inevitably, the storytelling took over. News accounts of the events and letters from Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack to their friend Ned Buntline were printed in dime novels. They further blurred the line between frontier fiction and factual reality, and they set the literal stage for what happened next.

That February, just after his hunt with the Grand Duke, Buffalo Bill found himself in New York City for the first time. Far away from the Nebraska frontier, Bill was the guest of honor for some of the same men he had guided on hunts, men like Professor Henry Ward, New York Herald publisher James Gordon Bennett, and Ned Buntline. They had asked Bill to come to the city before, but he had protested that he would have to wait until his wife could make him a suit of clothes which were suitable for the Big Apple. In New York, Bill was the center of attention. Men, women, and children who had read the combination of the action-packed dime novels and equally action-packed newspaper accounts of his adventures were

anxious to lay their eyes on Buffalo Bill, chief of scouts and king of the border men. Bill enjoyed the attention for the most part. But on his 26th birthday, Bill Cody experienced one of the worst nights of his life. Ned Buntline's Buffalo Bill dime novel had been adapted into a stage play. A famous actor named J.B. Studley played the part of Buffalo Bill on Broadway, and the real Buffalo Bill Cody was invited by Ned Buntline to view the performance on its opening night. The play was a success, but before the curtains closed, Studley called the real Buffalo Bill to the stage, where he was greeted by a hail of applause from the audience and asked to speak. Buffalo Bill later wrote,

I found myself standing behind the footlights and in front of an audience for the first time in my life. I looked up, then down, then on each side, and everywhere I saw a sea of human faces and thousands of eyes all staring at me. I confess that I felt very much embarrassed, never more so in my life, and I knew not what to say. I made a desperate effort, and a few words escaped me, but what they were I could not for the life of me tell, nor could anyone else in the house. My utterances were inaudible even to the leader of the orchestra, who was sitting only a few feet in front of me. Bowing to the audience, I beat a hasty retreat into one of the canyons of the stage. I never felt more relieved in my life than when I got out of view of that immense crowd. The theater director offered Bill the enormous sum of $500 a week to portray himself on stage,

but the experience of standing in front of the crowd was enough to convince Bill he couldn't do it. He wrote later, I told him that it would be useless for me to attempt anything of the kind, for I never could talk to a crowd of people like that, even if it was to save my neck, and that he might as well try to make an actor out of a government mule. Bill quickly returned to Nebraska. Ned Buntline sent letter after letter,

begging Bill to try his hand at acting, and promising that it would make him and his family rich beyond their wildest dreams. Bill and Louisa discussed the situation. She agreed with Bill that he might not be qualified as an actor, but she was hesitant to turn down the promise of untold riches for what seemed like minimal effort. Bill continued to debate the idea until, according to Louisa, Texas Jack roamed down to the house, heard that Will was seriously considering the Buntline proposition, and immediately decided that he would like to go on stage himself.

Will, wavering, was strengthened. Buffalo Bill didn't think he could make it as a stage actor on his own, but with the encouragement and involvement of his scouting partner Texas Jack, he was willing to give it an honest effort. By December of 1872, the pair were on a train bound for Chicago, where they would trade their lives as frontier scouts for a chance for fame and fortune as actors. Next time on Legends of the Old West, Buffalo Bill takes the plunge into acting with his friend Texas Jack. They're not the best actors, and the play won't win awards, but audiences love all three. Cody recruits Wild Bill for the show, then suffers another tragedy, then rejoins the army as a scout after the Little Big

Horn and finds himself in his most famous battle. That's next week on Legends of the Old West. Members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week to receive new episodes. They receive the entire series to binge all at once with no commercials, and they also receive exclusive bonus episodes. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. Memberships are just $5 per month. This series was researched and written by Matthew Kearns. Original music by Rob Valliere. I'm your host and producer, Chris Wimmer. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us

a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. Check out our website, blackbarrelmedia.com for more details and join us on social media. We're at Old West Podcast on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. And all of our episodes are available on YouTube. Just search for Legends of the Old West Podcast. Thanks for listening.