Legends of the Old West - BUFFALO BILL Ep. 3 | “‘First Scalp For Custer’”

Episode Date: December 27, 2023

Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack quickly become rich and famous actors, but they continue to head west between tours to act as hunting guides and scouts for the Army. In the summer of 1876, the Army enlists the help of both men in the aftermath of the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Buffalo Bill survives his soon-to-legendary fight with Cheyenne warrior Yellow Hair, but loses his old friend Wild Bill Hickok to the lawlessness of Deadwood. 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

Buffalo Bill's premiere as an actor did not go according to the plan or the script. After he and Texas Jack Omohundro had met popular writer Ned Buntline three years earlier, Buntline's dime novels had helped make Bill the most famous scout on the prairie. One of those dime novels had been adapted for the stage with an actor playing the role of Buffalo Bill. The play was such a hit that the theater director wanted Bill to play himself on stage. Bill had horrible stage fright and was extremely hesitant to try his hand at acting. Ned Buntline sent letter after letter which promised Bill riches if he became a stage performer. But it was only after Bill's friend, Texas Jack,

said he wanted to try the adventure that Bill agreed to give it a shot. Buntline said he had written a play about the Celebrity Scouts which was set to debut in Chicago in mid-December 1872. Bill and Jack arrived in Chicago with only four days to memorize their lines and rehearse their actions before the premiere. And it was then that they discovered that Ned Buntline had not yet written the play. And it was then that they discovered that Ned Buntline had not yet written the play. In a furious bout of scribbling over a total of about four hours, Buntline wrote the play that he called The Scouts of the Prairie.

Extras were hired to play the parts of the Indian warriors who fought the Scouts, and actors were hired to play the villains. Buntline told them he was taking on a speaking role to act as a kind of narrator, helping keep them on track and explain events for the audience. He had also hired one of the most famous ballerinas in the world to play the part of the Indian maiden who was supposed to fall in love with Buffalo Bill's character after he saved her life. Without adequate time to rehearse, Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack were incredibly nervous on the night of December 16, 1872, when the stage lights came up and the audience got quiet. offstage going over their lines while Ned Buntline talked to the crowd about the dangers that lurked around every corner in the American West. Bears and rattlesnakes, Indian warriors, and renegade white men. As a prompt, he was supposed to bang his rifle on the stage to tell Bill and Jack when

they should walk out and join him. But before he could, a drunk from the audience wandered onto the stage and held out a bottle of whiskey. Buntline pushed the man off the stage and launched into an impromptu temperance lecture in character, telling the audience that the renegades and warriors he had warned them about had both fallen under the influence of, quote, fire water. Buntline was an actor within an actor. On stage, he vehemently preached against drinking alcohol. In private, he was a notorious drunk. That night, by the time he finished his speech and banged his rifle on the stage boards, both Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack had forgotten what they were supposed to say. They ambled onto the stage and stood there in silence.

Bundline tried to rescue them. He said, Buffalo Bill, where you been? Bill stared at the audience, trying desperately to remember what he was supposed to say. Buffalo Bill, Bundline said again a little louder. Have you been out hunting buffalo? As Bill scanned the audience, he saw a familiar face. William Milligan was a wealthy Chicago merchant who had gone out to Nebraska earlier that year to hunt buffalo with Bill. And since Bill couldn't remember his lines, he started rambling about his hunt with Milligan. He told them how Milligan wanted to prove himself in a fight against the Sioux, right up until the moment he actually saw a warrior on horseback across the prairie. The audience laughed, and when the story ended, Texas Jack yelled to Bill that he had spotted some Indians.

Extras in loincloths rushed on stage, only to fall before the rifles and revolvers of Buffalo Bill, Texas Jack, and Ned Buntline. As a whole, the show was over-the-top melodrama. The writing was bad and the acting by the scouts was worse. Critics warned readers that the show was one of the worst they had ever seen. One reported, There is a well-founded rumor that Ned Buntline, who wrote the play in which Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack appeared, took only four hours to complete the task.

The question naturally arises, what was he doing all that time? Another critic said, As an artistic success, the Scouts of the Prairie can hardly be called a season's event, but for downright fun, engine killin red fire, and rough and tumble, it is a wonder. And as Bill and Jack learned, the second half of that review was all that mattered. The play didn't have to be Shakespeare, it just had to be entertaining. The next night, the theater was packed to capacity, and Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack were on their way to stardom. 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 3, First Scalp for Custer. The show moved on from Chicago to every major city in the northeastern United States, playing for over eight weeks in more than 30 locations. And just like Buntline had promised, Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack were now richer than they ever could have imagined. When they got on a train back to Nebraska after their dramatic tour ended,

a reporter stopped the men to ask if they were returning to their old jobs as scouts. Bill answered, I'm no damned scout now. I'm a first-class star. Buffalo Bill earned an incredible amount of money as an actor. Some accounts said it was $30,000 on his first tour, the equivalent of $750,000 today for six months of work. But he spent as much money as he made, sometimes renting out entire hotel floors if he thought his neighbors were too loud, and treating his money like it came from a spring that would never go dry. So at the end of that first tour,

he was shocked to find that he only had about $6,000 to his name. Ned Buntline, who was reckless about almost everything else in his life, but was careful about money, had a much more sizable war chest. Bill decided that the writer was earning and keeping way too much of the profit that his show was generating. Bill and Jack agreed to part ways with Buntline and rewrite the show. And while they were hunting in Nebraska, they reunited with an old friend who agreed to join them for their next tour. By all accounts, Wild Bill Hickok was a legendary lawman,

a fearless scout, and an expert pistolier. But he wasn't much of an actor. Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack didn't know that when they invited him to join their show for the second tour. Wild Bill agreed to meet the two men in New York City in the first week of September 1873. Buffalo Bill headed to New York, while Texas Jack married their former co-star, Jessapina Morlocki, who agreed to rejoin the show. While the happy couple was honeymooning, and while Bill was making his way to the city,

Buffalo Bill starred in Buffalo Bill, King of the Border Men. It was the play that had introduced him to the world of big-time theater, and he had watched an actor play the role of Buffalo Bill. Now he would play the role himself and reap all the rewards. Soon afterward, advertisements for the new show were printed up, which had changed the name of Buntline's play from The Scouts of the Prairie to The Scouts of the Plains. It advertised Buffalo Bill, Texas Jack, and Wild Bill as the scouts, and the Peerless Morlocki, as Jessapina was known, in the role of the Indian maiden.

The show debuted in New York, and it was immediately apparent that Wild Bill was somehow an even worse actor than his friends. The play's opening scene was supposed to be the three men sitting around a campfire, passing a jug of whiskey, and telling each other and the audience about their adventures. Buffalo Bill took a drink and told a story about a buffalo hunt on the Nebraska prairie. He passed the jug to Texas Jack, who took a swig and told a tale of a fight with the Comanche and a cattle stampede in Texas. Jack passed the jug to Hickok, who turned it up, took a long drink, and then spit the contents all over the stage.

You must think I'm the worst fool east of the Rockies, Hickok yelled to his friends, that I can't tell whiskey from cold tea. This don't count, and I can't tell a story under the temptation unless I get real whiskey. The audience laughed, and I can't tell a story under the temptation unless I get real whiskey." The audience laughed, and someone was sent to find real whiskey so the show could continue. But Hickok never warmed to acting the way his friends did. He increasingly felt like the show was a farce and that the audience was laughing at him instead of with him. His growing frustration did not make the production a pleasant experience for

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Go to shopify.com slash r-e-a-l-m now to grow your business, no matter what stage you're in. Shopify.com slash Realm. Wild Bill stuck with the show for nearly seven months, during which time he often entertained himself at the expense of the extras in the show. He fired hot gunpowder from his pistols at the extras' legs when he was supposed to be firing over their heads. They rolled around in agony when they were supposed to be playing dead. Buffalo Bill had turned some of the profits from the first tour into a home in Rochester, New York, where he had moved his wife and children. When the tour was scheduled to play his new hometown on March 10, 1874, Cody was anxious to impress his new neighbors, and he asked Hickok to take

the show seriously. Hickok ignored his friend and pulled his old prank of firing at the exposed legs of a stage warrior. Backstage, Buffalo Bill and Wild Bill argued, with Texas Jack trying to desperately calm his friends and keep the act together. But it was no use. Hickok stormed out of the theater and never acted again. When the show was over, Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack found Hickok at the hotel, where he told them he had decided to return to the West. at the hotel where he told them he had decided to return to the West. To show Hickok there were no hard feelings, Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack paid him the rest of his salary with an additional gift of $1,000 and a pair of Colt revolvers. Wild Bill left town, bound for Cheyenne and eventually his final fate in the gold boom town of Deadwood. Wild Bill's departure from the troupe didn't slow their momentum. For four more months, theaters were full and ticket sales were robust. Buffalo

Bill was ready to start another tour immediately, but Texas Jack had made an arrangement to hunt in the Yellowstone with the Earl of Dunraven, and Jack's wife was heading to her Massachusetts farm for the summer. In July of 1874, Cody returned to Nebraska with Thomas P. Medley, a wealthy Londoner who was willing to pay $1,000 to have Buffalo Bill serve as a guide. A North Platte dentist turned sharpshooter named Dr. William F. Carver joined them for the hunt. When it ended, Cody was hired by Captain Anson Mills of the 3rd Cavalry to scout for an expedition into Wyoming's Bighorn Mountains. Earlier in the summer,

1,200 soldiers under the command of Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer had set off for the Black Hills to confirm reports of gold in the area. Captain Mills and his group were supposed to intercept any Sioux warriors en route to the hills. Bill rode home to tell his family, We are directly in the stronghold of the Indians, and I anticipate a lively time. I will not get east for some time. and I anticipate a lively time. I will not get east for some time. But the expedition lasted less than two months and never encountered any Sioux. While Bill waited for Texas Jack to finish his trek through the Yellowstone,

Cody hired a new company and started a tour on his own. Between shows, he talked to reporters about his recent scouting trip with the Army and what he saw as the inevitable fight over gold in the Black Hills. He said, The Indians do not care for the march of United States troops through their country, but when they see a miner with a pick and spade, they know he comes to stay, and they will scalp him if possible. Buffalo Bill wrapped his solo tour in June of 1875 and returned to his home in Rochester, New York, where he spent the summer with his wife and children for the first time in years. By late August, Texas Jack was done with his long hunt, and he and his wife joined Bill

for what would be their last tour together. By now, Bill and Jack were seasoned actors with several successful tours under their belts, and this was their most ambitious tour yet. They ventured into the Deep South with visits to Charleston, South Carolina, Savannah, Georgia, and Montgomery, Alabama before heading into Texas. From there, they turned north,

eventually making their way to Ontario, Canada. By April of 1876, they had been on the road for eight months and played more than 80 cities. But with the end in sight, Buffalo Bill would suffer a tragedy out of nowhere, though it was one that would seem terribly familiar. would seem terribly familiar. Cody was summoned home by an urgent telegram from his wife. He was in Springfield, Massachusetts, and rushed out after the first act of the show to catch a train to Rochester. He arrived just in time to hold his son, Kit Carson Cody, for the final hour of his life. When five-year-old Kit died of scarlet fever on April 20, 1876, it took the wind out of Buffalo Bill's sails. He sent a telegram to Texas

Jack that said, my only darling boy is dead. When Bill rejoined the traveling show a few days later, he told Jack that he had made a decision. He would give up the career he had built as an actor over the last four years and return west, where he hoped he could take up his old job as a scout. Bill said he would keep the show together until the tour was done in six weeks, but after that, he didn't expect to return to the stage ever again. didn't expect to return to the stage ever again. On June 3, 1876, Buffalo Bill, Texas Jack, and Jessapina Morlocki played their final show together. Without another tour booked or a buffalo hunt to lead, Bill headed to Philadelphia to join Texas Jack to celebrate the nation's centennial. to celebrate the nation's centennial.

In the summer of 1876, citizens from across the country streamed into Philadelphia to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the nation's founding. While waiting for the festivities to begin, Bill received a message from Captain Anson Mills of the 3rd Cavalry, saying tensions between settlers, Sioux, and the Army in the Black Hills were at an all-time high. The captain asked Bill to return to service as a scout. Little did Bill know that this would be nothing like the previous uneventful expedition with Mills in 1874. Three weeks after Buffalo Bill and Texas Jacks last showed together, five of the 12 companies of the 7th Cavalry, along with their commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, were wiped out in an encounter on the Little Bighorn River in Montana. forces in recorded history, led by legendary warriors Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Gall, American Horse, and many others, dealt the 7th Cavalry and the U.S. Army as a whole a shocking blow. In the aftermath of Custer's defeat, the Army devoted a sizable force to tracking down and defeating Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse and the men who had followed them. Cody signed on as chief of scouts for

Colonel Wesley Merritt and the 5th Cavalry. At the end of June, they learned that 800 Cheyenne warriors in Morning Star's band were headed to reinforce Crazy Horse in the Powder River country. The 5th rode out of Fort Laramie, Wyoming to intercept. Near dawn on the morning of July 17, 1876, in northwestern Nebraska, Cody and his fellow scouts spotted a small band of Cheyenne warriors riding in advance of the main force. Cody's detachment was worried that the warriors were scouts who would give away the cavalry's position. Cody and his men hurried ahead to cut them off. The army scouts descended into a ravine on Warbonnet Creek. The skirmish that followed was relatively small, but would prove to be one of the most pivotal moments in Buffalo Bill's life.

Buffalo Bill's version of the story is that two army messengers were in danger of being overtaken by the Cheyenne, and that he and a few scouts dashed forward to save them. The scouts and the Cheyenne fought for a few minutes, leaving three warriors dead. And then, Bill saw a handsomely decorated war chief who shouted at him in the Cheyenne language. Bill said the two rode toward each other. Bill fired his rifle to take out the warrior's horse, as his own steed tripped in a hole and sent him tumbling. Both men recovered and ran toward one another.

Both raised their weapons and fired, but the warrior's bullet missed its mark while Buffalo Bill's aim was true. In Bill's words, Before he had fairly touched the ground, I was upon him, knife in hand, and had driven the keen-edged weapon to its hilt in his heart. Jerking his war bonnet off, I scientifically scalped him in about five seconds. According to Cody, moments after the one-on-one fight between Buffalo Bill and the warrior named Yellow Hair,

the main force of the army arrived and ensured that several hundred Cheyenne couldn't avenge the warrior's death. Other accounts of the skirmish exist, and historians disagree on several points. But two facts in Bill's account are undeniably true. He did kill and scalp the Cheyenne warrior Yellow Hair. And immediately after, Bill held the war bonnet and scalp over his head and yelled this quote to the soldiers of the 5th Cavalry, the first scalp for Custer. Regardless of the discrepancies with some of the details, the event was truly one of those incredible stand-alone moments of the American West. Bill sent the scalp and the war bonnet home to his wife, and when the fighting was over and the Sioux were safely on the north side of the

Canadian border, he commissioned a new play called The Red Right Hand, or First Scalp for Custer, called the Red Right Hand, or First Scalp for Custer, which highly dramatized the fight with Yellow Hair. As Bill headed home from the expedition, he met Texas Jack unexpectedly. While Bill had been busy fighting the Cheyenne with Colonel Merritt, Jack had spent the summer scouting for General Alfred Terry, the overall commander of the campaign, which had lost Custer's command at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. When Bill told Jack about his fight with Yellowhair and his plans to tour again in a show about the encounter, Jack explained that he had already made plans for another long expedition into the Wyoming wilderness, followed by a dramatic tour of his own. The men shook hands and parted as friends, and they never performed together on stage again. No one knows precisely what Buffalo Bill and Texas

Jack talked about when they agreed to dissolve their partnership, but it's safe to assume that one of the topics was their mutual friend and former stage partner, Wild Bill Hickok. That summer, the summer of 1876, while Bill and Jack were scouting for the army, Hickok was seeking his fortune in the gold mining camp of Deadwood, deep in the Black Hills. Hickok had recently married a famous circus owner and performer named Agnes Thatcher Lake. Hickok had spent the money he had made as an unhappy actor, but he was unable to return to his career as a lawman because of his failing eyesight. He partnered with his old friend, Colorado Charlie Utter, in Cheyenne, Wyoming,

and headed to the Black Hills. His wife's circus was successful, and she was a relatively wealthy woman, but Wild Bill wanted to bring his own money to the marriage. Deadwood was his last-ditch attempt to earn a fortune before settling down for good. Buffalo Bill later said, I met him on his way to the Black Hills, just before he was killed. He said he did not expect to come out again alive. Hickok had good reason for his paranoia. He knew that plenty of men either carried a vendetta or had a longing to go down in history as the man who gunned down Wild Bill. On August 1st, 1876, Hickok was gambling at Nudall and Mann's Saloon No. 10 when a no-account drifter named Jack McCall walked into the saloon, lingered by the bar for a few minutes, and then, without warning, pulled a pistol and shot Wild Bill in the head.

Hickok died instantly and was buried in a cemetery on the edge of town by his friend Charlie Utter. It was one of the saddest endings for a genuine legend of the Old West, and it hit Buffalo Bill hard. a genuine legend of the Old West, and it hit Buffalo Bill hard. Cody had looked up to Wild Bill Hickok more than perhaps any man he'd ever known. In some ways, Hickok was a combination of the older brother Buffalo Bill had lost when he was seven and the father he had lost when he was 11. Cody had grown his hair long and wore fringe buckskins in order to look more like Wild Bill. His entire life as a scout was modeled after Hickok, as were the performative nature

and self-promotional aspects of his persona. As Buffalo Bill left Dakota Territory to return to the stage, he must have been acutely aware that whatever happened next would be completely different than what had come before. His son was gone, and even though his adventures in the Black Hills had been a welcome distraction, they did little to ease the pain of his loss. Now his old friend and mentor, Wild Bill, was dead. His best friend and partner, Texas Jack, wouldn't be on stage with him. And worse,

Jack would be directly competing against Buffalo Bill. And when Jack went his own way, he took the star power and talent of his wife with him, along with the show's co-star and promotional manager, John Burke. Between April and August of 1876, so many things Bill relied on had vanished. He would have to start over and find a way to rely mostly on himself in the next phase of his life. Buffalo Bill might be the star of his new show, but he knew he couldn't do it alone. He wrote to another scout named Captain Jack Crawford, whom he'd met during his time in the Black Hills. The new play was loosely based on Bill's fight with Yellow Hair. Bill played himself, and Crawford played Yellow Hair. Kicking off in

early October of 1876, in Bill's adopted hometown of Rochester, the show played for nine months. adopted hometown of Rochester, the show played for nine months. It moved west for three weeks of shows in San Francisco before playing across California and winding up with performances in Virginia City and Carson City, Nevada. Cody and Crawford made it to nearly the end of the run without any major trouble, but the luck didn't hold. On June 28, 1877, three shows before the end of the tour, Buffalo Bill and Captain Jack were on stage for the show's big finale, the duel between the Great Scout and the Cheyenne Warrior. Captain Jack, as Yellow Hair, cocked his pistol, placed it in his holster, and mounted his horse to start the scene. But as he drew the revolver, it snagged and discharged prematurely. It fired a blank cartridge into Jack's groin.

Crawford fell from his horse. Blood soaked his leather breeches, but he struggled through his fight with Buffalo Bill and the end of the show. Afterward, Crawford blamed Bill for the accident, for some reason. The two men fought and never reconciled over the course of the next 40 years. For the rest of Jack Crawford's life, he publicly railed against Buffalo Bill, and later, Bill's Wild West shows. Bill's first tour as both leading man and show manager could be considered a success overall, but it certainly didn't end well. Nevertheless, two months later, Buffalo Bill was ready to start another

tour. Rutherford B. Hayes had become president in March of 1877, and the new administration brought in a new Secretary of the Interior. The Secretary brought new rules which allowed Bill, for the first time, to recruit Sue from the Red Cloud Agency to join his show. The new play, called May Cody, or Lost and Won, was based on the 1857

Mountain Meadows Massacre in Utah, in which a Mormon militia and their Paiute allies killed 140 non-Mormon immigrants who were bound for California. On most days of the nine-month tour, the show cost around $200 per show to produce, and brought in around $400. The Sioux played Buffalo Bill's allies and proved to be a huge attraction. Bill was finding his way as a leading man and a tour manager, and he made enough money to make a major purchase.

During that tour, Bill bought cattle and a ranch on Nebraska's Dismal River. And despite his recent successes, he started telling reporters that he was planning on retiring from acting. In reality, Bill was just getting started. He would spend the next five years performing in different kinds of shows. Each one acted as a stepping stone toward his crowning achievement, the spectacle that would make him a world-famous showman. Next time on Legends of the Old West, Buffalo Bill does a couple more traditional stage tours, then launches into a series of shooting exhibitions with a marksman named Doc Carver.

That show evolved directly into the legendary Wild West show. Though, as always, Bill experienced professional success, but continued to suffer personal hardship and tragedy. 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.