Louis S. Warren (99 page)

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 Army 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.

46. Dippie,
Nomad,
55–57.

47. Barnum quoted in Millbrook, “Big Game Hunting,” 447–48.

48. Cody,
Life of Buffalo Bill,
145.

49. The literature on Custer is enormous but a good place to start is Utley,
Cavalier in Buckskin,
1–27. See also Jay Monaghan,
Custer: The Life of General George Armstrong Custer
(Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1959), 237–38.

50. Utley,
Life in Custer's Cavalry,
98; Utley,
Cavalier in Buckskin,
52–53. For dogs, see Custer,
My Life on the Plains,
98.

51. Utley,
Life in Custer's Cavalry,
128–29.

52. See Elizabeth Custer to Mrs. Sabin, n.d., in Merington,
Custer Story,
284; also, Robert Winston Mardock,
The Reformers and the American Indian
(Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1971), 41–42.

53. Utley and Washburn,
Indian Wars,
256; Russell,
Lives and Legends,
109–10; Hutton,
Phil
Sheridan and His Army,
67–68, 95–100; Utley,
Cavalier in Buckskin,
75–78.

54. Utley,
Cavalier in Buckskin,
106–7; Wert,
Custer,
26; Connell,
Son of the Morning Star,
200–2; Smith,
View from Officers' Row,
83; Hutton,
Phil Sheridan and His Army,
389, n. 45.

55. Guardhouse in Hays is in Connell,
Son of the Morning Star,
120–21.

56. Albert Barnitz to Jennie Barnitz, May 15, 1867, in Utley,
Life in Custer's Cavalry,
50.

57. King,
War Eagle,
214.

58. Cody,
Life of Buffalo Bill,
42. Emphasis added.

59. George Custer to Elizabeth Custer, Sept. 11, 1873, in Merington,
Custer Story,
264: “When the theatrical ventures of Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack were discussed Tom said it might be a good speculation to back our own ‘Antelope Jim'—on which Mr C rushed out indignantly from the tent.”

60. Davis, “Buffalo Range.”

61. Joseph G. Rosa,
Wild Bill Hickok: The Man and His Myth
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1990), 95–96; John S. Gray, “New Light on Will Comstock, Kansas Scout,” in
Custer and His Times,
ed. Paul Hutton (El Paso: Little Big Horn Associates, 1981), 183–207.

62. Custer,
My Life on the Plains,
144–45.

63. Custer,
My Life on the Plains,
44.

64. North,
Man of the Plains,
146–50.

65. Louis A. Holmes,
Fort McPherson, Nebraska, Fort Cottonwood, N.T.: Guardian of the Tracks
and Trails
(Lincoln, NE:, Johnsen Publishing Co., 1963), 47.

66. Quoted in Millbrook, “Big Game Hunting,” 447.

67. Paul Andrew Hutton, “Introduction,” in Davies,
Ten Days on the Plains,
16–19.

68. Earl of Dunraven [Windham Thomas Wyndham-Quin],
Past Times and Pastimes,
2 vols. (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1922), 2: 78.

69. North,
Man of the Plains,
150.

70. North,
Man of the Plains,
108.

71. Millbrook, “Big Game Hunting,” 451; Cody,
Life of Buffalo Bill,
153.

72. For significance of Indians, see Deloria,
Playing Indian,
esp. 63–5; for Pawnee scouts in 100th Meridian Expedition, see David Haward Bain,
Empire Express: Building the First
Transcontinental Railroad (New York: Viking, 1999), 292–93; Silas S. Seymour, Incidents of
a Trip Through the Great Platte Valley to the Rocky Mountains and Laramie Plains in the Fall
of 1866
(New York: Van Nostrand, 1867).

73. The first Wild West show program included an account of the Hundredth Meridian Expedition. Buffalo Bill and Doc Carver Wild West, Rocky Mountain, and Prairie Exhibition 1883 program (Hartford, CT: Calhoun Printing, 1883), n.p.

74. Donald Danker, in North,
Man of the Plains,
125; original source is Bruce,
Fighting
Norths and Pawnee Scouts,
19.

75. Webb,
Buffalo Land,
212.

76. “The Imperial Buffalo Hunter,”
New York
Herald,
Jan. 16, 1872, p. 7.

77. My interpretation of Cody's tales relies on Carolyn S. Brown, who writes that, generally speaking, tellers of tall tales invent themselves as characters in a performance, a fool or a hero who triumphs over nature, danger, fear, and outsiders through wit and skill. The storyteller holds an audience spellbound in proportion to his ability to fudge the line between truth and fiction, to dance across it and back again, never quite giving away which side is which, suspending the audience over it and allowing them to believe what they will. Brown,
Tall Tale,
28.

78. My interpretation of guides, dudes, and practical jokes borrows from Tina Loo, “Of Moose and Men: Hunting and Masculinities in British Columbia, 1880–1939,”
Western
Historical Quarterly
32, no. 3 (Autumn 2001): 296–319.

79. Webb,
Buffalo Land,
195.

80. Henry E. Davies,
Ten Days on the Plains,
ed. Paul Andrew Hutton (1872; rprt. Dallas, TX: DeGolyer Library, 1985), 122–23: “A story was told the next day, that, while our camp was buried in repose that night, a small party of Indians roamed among the sleepers, and the appearance of an undersized and ill-favored little squaw, dressed in a complete suit of red flannel, who accompanied the chief in command of the party, was minutely described by those who pretended to have observed these unexpected and unwelcome visitors.”

81. Cody,
Life of Buffalo Bill,
290–91; Millbrook, “Big Game Hunting,” 451–53.

82. See Paul A. Hutton's notes in Davies,
Ten Days on the Plains,
135–49.

83. Cody,
Life of Buffalo Bill,
282.

84. Davies,
Ten Days on the Plains,
83.

85. Cody,
Life of Buffalo Bill,
282–83.

86. Davies,
Ten Days on the Plains,
113, 123.

87. Davies,
Ten Days on the Plains,
122.

88. Davies,
Ten Days on the Plains,
107.

89. William Tucker,
The Grand Duke Alexis in the United States of America
(1872; rprt. New York: Interland Publishing, 1972), 155.

90. Tucker,
Grand Duke Alexis,
156, 158.

91. Tucker,
Grand Duke Alexis,
160–62.

92. Tucker,
Grand Duke Alexis,
163.

93. Tucker,
Grand Duke Alexis,
164, 167–68.

94. Ambrose,
Crazy Horse and Custer,
344. Tucker,
Grand Duke Alexis,
175, 178.

95. Tucker,
Grand Duke Alexis,
185–89.

96. Joy S. Kasson, Buffalo Bill's Wild West: Celebrity, Memory, and Popular History (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000), 47; at least one of Cody's contemporaries pointed out the fakery. Herbert Cody Blake to Judge Paine, June 6, 1934, Folder 2, WFC Collection, MS 58, NSHS.

97. Cody,
Life of Buffalo Bill,
305–6.

CHAPTER SEVEN: THEATER STAR

1. Cody,
Life of Buffalo Bill,
311. The
New York Herald
suggests a different scenario. “When the real Buffalo Bill was recognized on his entrance the audience rose en masse and greeted him with an ovation such as actors at the more aristocratic theatres never received.” “Amusements,”
New York Herald,
Feb. 21, 1872, p. 5.

2. Paul Hutton, “Introduction,” xvii–xviii, in David Crockett,
A Narrative of the Life
of David Crockett by
Himself
(1834; rprt., Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987); Carolyn S. Brown, The Tall Tale in American Folklore and Literature, 56, 71–72; also, Constance Rourke,
American Humor: A Study of the National Character
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Co., 1931), 70–71; James Kirk Paulding,
The Lion of the West,
ed. James N. Tidwell (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1954).