[Illustration:
“_BUFFALO BILL_”
FROM PRAIRIE TO PALACE
_COMPILED BY JOHN.M.BURKE_
_WITH THE AUTHORITY OF_
_GEN’L W.F. CODY (BUFFALO BILL)_
RIALTO SERIES. No. 13. June, ’93. Monthly. Subscription, $8.00.
Entered as second-class at the Post Office, Chicago
]
“BUFFALO BILL”
FROM PRAIRIE TO PALACE.
[Illustration:
W. F. Cody
“Buffalo Bill”
]
“BUFFALO BILL”
From Prairie to Palace
AN AUTHENTIC HISTORY OF THE WILD WEST
_With Sketches, Stories of Adventure, and Anecdotes of
“Buffalo Bill,” the Hero of the Plains_
COMPILED BY
JOHN M. BURKE (“ARIZONA JOHN”)
WITH THE AUTHORITY OF
GENERAL W. F. CODY (“BUFFALO BILL”)
CHICAGO AND NEW YORK
RAND, MCNALLY & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS
1893
Copyright, 1893, by Rand, McNally & Co.
NOTE.
The compiler of this book desires to give credit to General Dodge’s
“Thirty Years Among the Indians,” and to the Historical Publishing
Company, for a few of the facts and incidents given in these pages.
JOHN M. BURKE.
[Illustration: John M. Burke]
DEDICATION
TO
THOSE PIONEERS OF PROGRESS
WHO HAVE LED THE ADVANCE OF CIVILIZATION INTO SAVAGE
LANDS, DEFYING DANGER, SUFFERING EVERY HARDSHIP,
OVERCOMING ALL OBSTACLES, OFFERING LIFE
AS A SACRIFICE WHEN CALLED UPON,
THE ARMY OF THE UNITED STATES
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK.
JOHN M. BURKE
[Illustration: BUFFALO BILL.]
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
Compiler’s Preface, 11
I. Introductory, 13
II. The Scout, 20
III. What Is a Cowboy? 36
IV. The Riders of the World, 44
V. Indian Home Life, 59
VI. Expert Shooting, 71
VII. A Most Famous Ride, 77
VIII. Letters of Commendation from Prominent Military Men, 85
IX. Buffalo Bill’s Boyhood, 99
X. Bill Kills His First Indian, 104
XI. The Boy Miner, 110
XII. Story of the Pony Express, 113
XIII. A Ride for Life, 123
XIV. Held up by Road Agents, 127
XV. A Year of Adventures, 132
XVI. A Soldier of the Civil War, 140
XVII. A Champion Buffalo Hunter, 145
XVIII. Scout, Guide, and Indian Fighter, 151
XIX. Buffalo Bill’s Pards of the Plains, 159
XX. Border Poetry, 181
XXI. From Prairie to Palace, 189
XXII. The Wild West at Sea, 197
XXIII. A Royal Welcome, 207
XXIV. A Visit from Queen Victoria, 219
XXV. The Home Trail, 227
XXVI. Swinging around Europe, 232
XXVII. The Last Indian War, 252
XXVIII. Back to Europe, 260
Appendix, 269
An Episode Since the Return from Europe, 273
[Illustration]
COMPILER’S PREFACE.
An association of some thirty years with the subject of these pages,
a familiarity with his history gained by opportune meetings and
conversations with comrades now living, and those since dead--who
were witnesses of the events that assisted to make the individual
prominent--makes me feel it a public duty to accede to the publisher’s
request to compile a short, sharp, and veracious account of the unique
history of this picturesque character.
Born at a time, and reared in an atmosphere, the most romantic and
adventurous known in the history of our American frontier, when the
tidal wave of human progress, sweeping westward, was making history
faster than the historians could record it--it was his fate to be in
the field, and his fortune to grasp the opportunities to meet the
situation’s requirements, and, in the beaten path of what seemed
ordinary daily duty, to rise, by reason of his sterling qualities, his
daring, and his courage, to the distinction of a leader.
So quickly was the history of the central West recorded, as to make
the Great American Desert of our childhood seem almost a geographical
mirage, a tale of the romancer. It would seem to be a fairy story were
it not for the fact of its settlement, and the evidences of its now
almost ancient civilization.
The busy, hustling citizen of to-day scarcely has time to think, and
does not realize that the youths of the time of Benton, Beal, Fremont,
Bridger, and Carson are the relicts of the perfected history and work
that they inaugurated.
One of the most picturesque characters that evoluted from the peculiar
circumstances of the times is “Buffalo Bill,” Gen. W. F. Cody,
N. G. S. N. The romance, the fiction, woven around his personality is
dispelled in the white light of stern and veritable facts, just as the
golden rays of the morning sun drive the mist from the mountain-tops.
The compiler of the accompanying pages has attempted to present to the
reader, in a terse, compact compendium of facts, the story of a career
that, if given in a detailed biography, would absorb volumes, believing
that owing to his prominence at home and abroad the public desire some
authentic knowledge of the notable events in his career. In fact, here
are presented a few plain truths, unadorned, for the benefit of those
too occupied to have heretofore learned the story and triumphs of the
frontier lad of nine years, from the wild Western scenes of Kansas and
Nebraska, from the prairies of the Platte to the parlors of the East
and the palaces of Europe.
“BUFFALO BILL”
FROM PRAIRIE TO PALACE.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
Half a century or less ago, the people then active in the world were
unable to move from place to place more rapidly than in the days before
the Christian era. The fickle winds drove ships out of their course
and baffled their efforts to hold on their way to their destination.
On land the rapidity of progress from place to place was measured by
the fleetness of a horse. The steam-engine was in its infancy; the
telegraph and other electrical devices were only known through the
fable of the singing tree and the talking fountain in the tales of the
Arabian Nights; glittering gold still lay unheeded and unseen in the
beds of California streams.
The great peaks of the Rockies towered into the clouds, their grandeur
and beauty unknown to a world which had not then heard the sound of the
waters thundering down the cliffs of the Yosemite, a rival of Niagara.
Amid the beauties of the Garden of the Gods reigned a stillness as
profound as that which pervaded the Garden of Eden before the creation
of man.
But already the fearless and restless white man was on discovery bent,
and, with his face turned always toward the setting sun, one by one the
glories of the continent were seen and heralded.
Brev.-Capt. John C. Fremont of the United States Topographical
Engineers, with the famous Kit Carson as his guide, was exploring and
opening up the great trail which was to connect the two oceans.
The fur traders were settling in the Northwest, and Astoria was coming
into notice, while the echoes of Bonneville’s adventures were heard in
the Eastern world.
Among the men who found the East growing crowded was Isaac Cody,
who was then living in Iowa. He was a fine type of the Western
frontiersman, well educated, enterprising, and fearless. Leaving
his home, with his family he started across the plains. His journey
continued until he reached a point in Kansas near Fort Leavenworth, and
here he made camp and proceeded to build a new home.
“LITTLE BILLY” was then a boy, living the life and learning the lessons
of the plains, while Humboldt was wondering what secrets were hidden
in the center of the continent, and the geographical societies of the
world were speculating upon the mysteries that lay far beyond the banks
of the “Father of Waters.”
At that time this region was as little known and as dark a continent
as Africa before the courage of Stanley laid bare its conformation and
geography. The Indians had not then been confined to reservations, but
were fiercely resisting the encroachments of the white men upon their
territory. They disputed, step by step, the advancement to the westward
of the borders of civilization with a fiercer, because more ignorant,
determination to resist subjugation than is known in the history of the
world.
In this atmosphere, and amid such surroundings, this boy grew up, and
his rapid development was a natural result of such conditions. Physical
exercise in the open air developed his frame, and provided the steady
hand and quick eye.
Surrounded by enemies, he lived amid dangers so constant and
ever-present that they became part of his daily life, and fear was
unknown. Self-preservation taught him to oppose strategy with strategy,
and to learn the wiles of the red man in order that he might exist in
his country, and study the habits of the animals infesting the country,
for the dual purpose of avoiding danger and providing himself with
food and raiment. At the same time this wild life broadened his moral
nature, expanded his mind, and prepared it to receive great truths.
Broad men are the product of broad countries; narrowness and prejudice
are insular.
Sir Charles Dilke has recorded the history of “Greater Britain,” but
during the lifetime of this frontier boy he has seen with his own eyes
the growth of “Greater America.” In the short span of a life still in
its prime, he has seen the slow wagon-train crawling over the weary
miles of wind-swept prairie harassed by Indians and other foes, and he
has seen the long parallel iron rails push their way across the map of
the continent until they span it from gulf to gulf and from ocean to
ocean. The “prairie schooner” and the pony express have in his time
given way to the Pullman coach and the electric wire.
In his boyhood the strife and struggles, the perils and privations,
which had beset the Puritans in New England a century before, were
being reënacted on the Western plains; and of this period in the
development of our country this boy can truthfully say, “All of which I
saw, and part of which I was.”
In later life, when great military commanders intrusted their
lives, and those of their men, to his keeping, they did it with an
unhesitating confidence, begotten of the knowledge that he was born
and trained upon the spot; a veritable product of the soil. His father
having died while he was still young, he matured early. His widowed
mother taught the boy at her knee the elements of reading and writing,
and thus laid the foundation of an education which has been completed
in the school of the world.
Living for years in cabins or tents, and oftener under the canopy of
heaven, pursuing a career of independent activity which carried him
through the various stages of cattle-herder, teamster, bronco “buster,”
wagon-master, stage-driver, pony-express rider, hunter, guide, scout,
and soldier, he still found time to acquire an education which, added
to his native refinement and gentleness of bearing, enables him to
appear to advantage in any society or place. While perfection exists
only in the other world, and is not claimed for him, the herder and
scout has borne inspection, and passed muster, in the accepted centers
of refinement and cultivation of the world.
From the Rocky Mountains to the Colosseum at Rome is a “far cry,” and
yet that is the history of the settler’s son now known around the world
as Col. William F. Cody, or “Buffalo Bill.”
The pages of this book are not devoted to the recording of a legend
wherein the untutored, wild, and reckless roamer of the plains has
by chance, or the magic of phenomenal powers, won the open sesame to
the grandeur of patriarchal palaces, but rather to the telling of
how native courage and brilliant daring combined with sincerity of
purpose and purity of motive have made savage warriors of the prairies
to welcome and appreciate the joys of peace, have opened in the heart
of apparently desert places storehouses of wealth, and shown princely
powers that manhood, prowess, and honor are found as truly on the
prairies of the great West as in the centers of art and civilization.
The sturdy hero of the plains has been met by gracious hands at the
portals of the palace.
The discovery that a new world existed on the western shores of the
Atlantic was scarcely more a surprise to the grandees of the Old World,
than the realization that far beyond the great Father of Waters there
existed a country whose inhabitants were hunting buffaloes and living
in rude tents on prairies and amid rugged mountains, which needed but
the plow and the miner’s pick for keys to unlock treasuries filled with
richer products and rarer gems than the bright gleam of the mythical
Aladdin’s lamp e’er shone upon.
Now the world recognizes and gives tardy but sincere applause to the
venturesome spirits that first directed the attention of the world to
the grandeur and latent power of the great West. Occasionally a noble
of the East, in search of sport and adventure, visited this new country
and, returning, told of its vastness and magnificence. Romancers, upon
a few facts, accepted with hesitation, built stories which, though
thoroughly entertaining, were regarded as novels, never as histories.
Taking up the thread of the beautiful story so graphically told by
the facile pen of Washington Irving in his narration of the fur
traders’ trials, adventures, and discoveries, and weaving all into
a contemporaneous history, our Cody and his fellows have gathered
together the living actual facts of the prairies, and held them up
to the wondering, admiring gaze of the world in the court-yards of
the palaces of Europe. The barefooted urchin, that, astride of his
fleet-footed bronco, rode with a smile through every danger, carrying
news and cheer from old homes in the East to the strugglers of the
prairies, has since been accorded courtly welcome by crowned monarchs,
to whom he has exhibited in triumph trophies of American valor and
American enterprise. Kingly warriors have dragged captives chained
to their chariot-wheels as proofs of their victories; subjects have
shouted loud pæans of praise and glory of their lords and princes
returning as victors; but when, save in the history of William F. Cody,
have the conquered walked hand in hand with the conqueror, willing
witnesses to his glorious achievements; or when, before, have kings and
queens and emperors joined in according glad applause to a victor whose
only royal heritage was his native manhood, and whose only spoils of
victory were willing captives to peace and civilization.
From this man’s life, deeds, and successes others may glean lessons of
endurance and courage in days of trial, of hope in moments of despair,
and of gentleness and generosity in the hour of triumph.
With the earnest wish that such results may accrue from a perusal of
these pages, let us first recall Buffalo Bill’s record as a gallant and
trusty scout.
[Illustration: THE RESULT OF BAD GUIDING.]