Louis S. Warren (96 page)

62. Rosa,
They Called Him Wild Bill,
243–44.

63. Rosa,
They Called Him Wild Bill,
245. “Wild Bill accuses Buffalo Bill of having given Ned Buntline incidents of his (Wild Bill's) life, and claiming them as his (Buffalo Bill's) own adventures.”
Jefferson City
(
Missouri
)
People's Tribune,
Aug. 23, 1876.

64. John Burke to Jack Crawford, March 5, 1877 [1878?], M Crawford, Box 1, DPL-WHR.

65. Rosa,
They Called Him Wild Bill,
156–57, 249.

66. Sagala,
Buffalo Bill, Actor,
107.

67. Rosa, They Called Him Wild Bill, 90–91; Cody made up the expedition in W. F. Cody, An
Autobiography of Buffalo Bill
(New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1920), 81–90; Robert Athearn writes of Sherman's time in the West, and at Fort Riley, in
William Tecumseh
Sherman and the Settlement of the West
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1956), 46–47.

CHAPTER FIVE: GUIDE AND SCOUT

1. Major Armes of the Tenth Cavalry,
Ups and Downs of an Army Officer
(Washington, DC: By the author, 1900), 272. There is no official record of Cody scouting for the army until Sept.

2. Elbert Huber to Don Russell, Aug. 7, 1953, W. F. Cody 201 File, RG 407, NARA.

3. Russell,
Lives and Legends,
104.

4. “Scout,”
The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary,
2 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 2677.

5. Richard Slotkin,
Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier,
1600–1860
(Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1973), 188, 234–35, 289–91; D. H. Lawrence,
Studies in Classic American Literature
(1923; rprt., New York: Penguin, 1977), 68–69; Henry Nash Smith,
Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1950), 59–80. For a full discussion of the cultural and political implications of white Indianness in its manifold variations, see Philip J. Deloria,
Playing Indian
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), esp. 11–12, 41–42.

6. Smith,
Virgin Land,
81–89.

7. Slotkin,
Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization
(1985; rprt. New York: HarperCollins, 1994), 198–99.

8. Russell,
Lives and Legends,
480.

9. Colin G. Calloway,
One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West Before Lewis and
Clark
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004), 267–312; Frank R. Secoy,
Changing
Military Patterns on the Great Plains
(Locust Valley, NY: J. J. Augustin, 1953); Richard White, “The Winning of the West: The Expansion of the Western Sioux in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,”
Journal of American History
65, no. 2 (Sept. 1978): 319–43.

10. Richard N. Ellis, “Introduction,” xiv–xv, in
Cheyenne Dog Soldiers: A Ledgerbook History of
Coups and Combat,
ed. Jean Afton, David Fridtjof Halaas, Andrew E. Masich, and Richard N. Ellis (Niwot CO: Colorado Historical Society and University Press of Colorado, 1997).

11. Eugene F. Ware,
The Indian War
of 1864
(1911; rprt. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1960), 114; Louis A. Holmes,
Fort McPherson, Nebraska, Cottonwood, N.T.: Guardian of the Tracks
and Trails
(Lincoln, NE: Johnsen Publishing Co., 1963), 6.

12. Figures from Joanna L. Stratton, Pioneer Women: Voices from the Kansas Frontier (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981), 121.

13. Secoy,
Changing Military Patterns;
Richard White, “Winning of the West,” 319–43; Preston Holder,
The Hoe and the Horse on the Plains: A Study of Cultural Development Among
North American Indians
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1970); Andrew Isenberg,
The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History,
1750–1920
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 31–122; Joseph Jablow,
The Cheyenne in Plains Indian Trade Relations,
1795–1840
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1950); West,
Contested Plains.

14. Keim,
Sheridan's Troopers on the Borders,
134.

15. Custer, “On the Plains,”
Turf, Field,
and Farm,
Jan. 4, 1868, in
Nomad: George A. Custer in
Turf, Field and Farm, ed. Brian W. Dippie (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980), 36–37.

16. BBWW program 1887 (London: Allen, Scott, and Co., 1887), 29.

17. Buffalo Bill and Doc Carver Wild West, Rocky Mountain, and Prairie Exhibition 1883 (Hartford, CT: Calhoun Printing Co., 1883), n.p.; BBWW 1893 program (Chicago: Blakely Printing Co., 1893), 6, 17.

18. After his discharge from the Union army in September 1865, he was never a soldier again. Russell, Lives and Legends, 61; see also Cody's military records file, MS 6 W. F. Cody, Series I:A, Box 1/17, BBHC.

19. BBWW 1887 program (London: Allen, Scott & Co., 1887), 28. Russell,
Lives and Legends,
326; for reprinting of the letter and the change of dates, see BBWW 1893 program, 16.

20. Russell,
Lives and Legends,
160.

21. For a full discussion of Cody's loss of the medal and its restoration in 1989, see Oliver Kennedy, Memo of Jan. 12, 1989, Old Military and Civil Records, Case File of William F. Cody, Restoration of the Congressional Medal of Honor (NWTCB-94-Casefiles-AC88[10374]), NARA, Washington, D.C. The subject of Cody's military record and the Medal of Honor has been exhaustively discussed and documented in 201 File for William Cody, RG 407, Box 219, 370/84/27/03, NARA, Washington, DC (see esp. Lutz Wahl to Richard J. Walsh, Feb. 6, 1928).

22. Cody,
Life of Buffalo Bill,
271; WFC to “My Dear Friends in Rochester,” Aug. 9, 1872 [1874] MS 6, I:B, BBHC. The letter is dated 1872, but since Cody reports his assignment to the Big Horn Expedition of 1874, I have corrected the error in my citation. As chief of scouts for the Fifth Cavalry, a post he ascended to in 1868, Cody would have been entitled to a share of the horses and other property captured from enemy Sioux and Cheyenne. WFC testimony, March 23, 1904, p. 9.

23. Russell,
Lives and Legends,
103.

24. Philip H. Sheridan, Personal Memoirs of P. H. Sheridan, 2 vols. (New York: Charles Webster & Company, 1888), 2:300–1.

25. Cody,
Life of Buffalo Bill,
188–97.

26. Cody,
Life of Buffalo Bill,
197; for mules in the army, see Robert Utley,
Frontier Regulars:
The United States Army and the Indian,
1868–1891
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1973), 48; also Emmett M. Essin, Shave Tails and Bell Sharps: The History of the U.S. Army
Mule
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1997).

27. Sheridan,
Personal Memoirs,
2:301.

28. George E. Hyde,
The Life of George Bent, Written from His Letters,
ed. Savoie Lottinville (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968), 335–39; E. Adamson Hoebel,
The
Cheyennes: Indians of the Great Plains
(Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), 72–73; West,
Contested Plains,
198.

29. George F. Price,
Across the Continent with the Fifth Cavalry
(1883; rprt. New York: Antiquarian Press, 1959), 131–33.

30. Russell,
Lives and Legends,
111.

31. Webb,
Buffalo Land,
194.

32. George A. Custer,
My Life on the Plains, or Personal Experiences with Indians
(1874; rprt. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1962), 279.

33. Karen Halttunen,
Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle Class Culture in
America,
1830–1870
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1982), 1–32.

34. Stanley,
My Early Travels and Adventures,
114, 183–86.

35. Eugene A. Carr, “Memoirs of Brvt. Major General E. A. Carr,” typescript, n.d., p. 195, microfilm MS 2688, Reel 1, NSHS.

36. Utley,
Frontier Regulars,
65–67.

37. Utley,
Frontier Regulars,
11–14; also Robert Utley,
Cavalier in Buckskin: George Armstrong
Custer and the Western Military Frontier
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988), 103; soldiers usually had only partial uniforms—or none at all. See Utley,
Frontier Regulars,
77; also John F. Finerty,
War-Path and Bivouac: The Big-Horn and Yellowstone Expedition
(1890; rprt. Chicago: R. R. Donnelly & Sons, 1955), 249: “[A]nd as for the uniform the absence thereof is a leading characteristic of the service.”

38. Sherry Smith,
The View from Officers' Row: Army Perceptions of Western Indians
(Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1990), 2.

39. Smith,
View from Officers' Row,
7–10; Knight,
Life and Manners in the Frontier Army,
220–26; Utley,
Frontier Regulars,
59–68. This alienation was traditional. Edward M. Coffman writes that up to 1860, all soldiers shared “the experience of being military men in a country which did not like soldiers and at a time when many also deplored the concept of professionalism in any field.” Edward M. Coffman,
The Old Army: A Portrait of the
American Army in Peacetime,
1784–1898
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 103.

40. Knight,
Life and Manners in the Frontier Army,
76.

41. Knight,
Life and Manners in the Frontier Army,
80.

42. Smith,
View from Officer's Row,
141. The army reinstituted brevet promotions in 1890.

43. Utley,
Cavalier in Buckskin,
103; Russell,
Lives and Legends,
119–20; for jealousy, see Armes,
Ups and Downs of an Army Officer,
333.

44. For cold, see Armes,
Ups and Downs of an Army Officer,
208.

45. Custer,
My Life on the Plains,
49.

46. Among the sternest critics of the Indian wars army were Civil War veterans, who looked down on the struggling Plains campaigns as a series of ill-fought minor skirmishes. Nate Salsbury, Cody's managing partner for many years in the Wild West show and a Union combat veteran, reflected his comrades' consensus when he bitterly remarked that “as a private soldier during the Civil War, I smelled more powder in one afternoon at Chickamauga, than all the ‘Great Scouts' that America has ever produced ever did in a lifetime.” Nate Salsbury Papers (henceforth cited as NSP), “Long Hair and a Plug Hat,” MS 17, Box 2/63, YCAL, Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT.

47. Utley,
Frontier Regulars,
114–21; and
Cavalier in Buckskin,
47–49.

48. Utley,
Frontier Regulars,
23. Custer's regiment was plagued by desertion and low morale. Of the 963 enlisted men assigned to the Seventh Cavalry at Fort Riley, Kansas, in 1866, 80—nearly 10 percent—deserted in the next six months. Jeffrey D. Wert,
Custer: The
Controversial Life of George Armstrong Custer
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), 233–36, 246–64; Evan S. Connell, Son of the Morning Star, 150–51.

49. Coffman,
Old Army,
339–48. Soldiers voted with their feet. Where fewer than one soldier in ten deserted in 1871, nearly one in three deserted the following year. For six months without pay, see Robert Utley, ed.,
Life in Custer's Cavalry: Diaries and Letters of
Albert and Jennie Barnitz,
1867–1868
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977), 128.

50. Reginald Horsman,
Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 34–36, 62–97; Slotkin,
Fatal Environment,
230–31; Smith,
Virgin Land,
37–38. For contemporary references to Anglo-Saxonism see “The Loss of the Tasmanians,”
New York Times,
Jun. 12, 1869, p. 4; “What Anglo-Saxonism Is,”
New York Times,
Feb. 8, 1880, p. 7; Walt Whitman meditates on Aryan millennialism and westward expansion in his 1860 poem, “Facing West from California Shores,” in Walt Whitman,
Leaves of Grass and Selected Prose,
ed. John Kouwenhoven (New York: Modern Library, 1950), 92. See also Stuart Anderson,
Race
and Rapprochement: Anglo-Saxonism and Anglo-American Relations,
1895–1904
(Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1981), 1–70, esp. 39–45, 57–61. General Sherman referred to the Indian wars as “the Battle of Civilization.” G. W. Baird, A Report
to the Citizens Concerning Certain Late Disturbances on the Western Frontier Involving Sitting
Bull, Crazy Horse, Chief Joseph, and Geronimo
(1891; rprt. Ashland, OR: Lewis Osborne, 1972), 21. In 1868, General Sherman could claim that his soldiers were fighting “enemies of our race and our civilization.” William T. Sherman to Philip Sheridan, Oct. 9, 1868, quoted in Utley,
Frontier Regulars,
145.

51. These were the Thirty-eighth, Thirty-ninth, Fortieth, and Forty-first infantries. Utley,
Frontier Regulars,
25–26; Coffman,
Old Army,
331; see also William H. Leckie and Shirley A. Leckie,
The Buffalo Soldiers: A Narrative of the Black Cavalry in the West,
rev. ed. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003); Quintard Taylor,
In Search of the Racial
Frontier: African Americans in the American West,
1528–1990
(New York: Norton, 1998), 164–91, esp. 165.

52. Oliver Knight,
Following the Indian Wars: The Story of the Newspaper Correspondents Among
the Indian Campaigners
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1960), 23.