Legends of the Old West - BUFFALO BILL Ep. 6 | “‘Tin Jesus On Horseback’”

Episode Date: January 17, 2024

Difficult times are ahead for Buffalo Bill Cody in the final years of his life. He helps found the town of Cody, Wyoming, but its creation, and other investments, lead to dire financial trouble. Bill���s marriage falls apart in a public scandal and he experiences more personal tragedy as he also witnesses America’s evolution from the Old West to the Gilded Age. In the end, his impact is incomparable. 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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 1867, before Bill Cody rose to fame as a hunter, a scout, or a showman, he had tried his hand as a town founder. The town he founded, Rome, Kansas, was an utter failure. Bill spent money, time, and effort trying to make the town a success, but when the Kansas Pacific Railroad bypassed Rome in favor of nearby Hayes City, Bill conceded the venture was over. The business failure put tension on his marriage, and it created a rift between Bill and his wife Louisa that never really mended. Almost 30 years later, in 1896, Buffalo Bill again lent his fortune, his time, and his efforts to a new town.

But now, he added both his fame and his name. Cody, Wyoming would eventually prove more successful than Rome, Kansas, but betting his fortune on his own town nearly cost Buffalo Bill everything. Bill told a friend, I had never had any peace up to this time during my married life, and I wanted to seek a place where I could have peace in my old age, and I went off up into that wild new country to be away from trouble, domestic trouble. But even in the far reaches of Wyoming,

trouble found Buffalo Bill, and it wasn't just domestic trouble. Bill was not the easiest guy to get along with. He wasn't smart with money, was prone to excessive drinking, and he employed men who adored him long after they proved to be trouble for both himself and the Wild West production. Nearly all of his business partnerships ended badly. He feuded with one-time partners Captain Jack Crawford and Doc Carver until the day he died. And even though he had an eight-year partnership with Nate Salisbury on the Wild West, the partnership turned dark at the end. As the years ticked toward the new century of 1900, Nate Salisbury's health worsened, and his frustrations and mistrust of Buffalo Bill grew more pronounced. He grew increasingly concerned that when he died, Buffalo Bill would somehow find a

way to deny Salisbury's wife and children the money from his part of the Partnership of the Wild West. Salisbury's mistrust is evident in his lengthy account of the time that he and Cody spent together, a book he threatened to name 16 Years in Hell with Buffalo Bill. The end was growing near for everyone, and it was going to get truly dark before the dawn. 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 6, Tin Jesus on Horseback. Nate Salisbury had managed the production called Buffalo Bill's Wild West since 1884, and toward the end, he seemed to have harbored serious resentment toward his partner,

Buffalo Bill Cody. In his writing, he airs his grievances very bluntly. Salisbury wrote, Buffalo Bill makes a virtue of keeping sober most of the time during the summer season, and when he does so for an entire season, he looks on himself as a paragon of virtue. But when the fever gets into his brain, he forgets honor, reputation, friend, and obligation in his mad eagerness to fill his hide with rotgut of any kind. He becomes so utterly lost to all sense of decency and shame that he will break his plighted word and sully his most solemn obligation. When he sobers up a little, he is so conceited as to imagine he has a perfect right to get drunk,

no matter at what cost to his associates in business, and takes for granted that he is so great a hero that all the world excuses him because he is an old times who saved America from going back to the wilderness Columbus founded. And Salisbury wasn't done. He plainly stated his reason for spilling his anger onto the page. All the brutal things that Cody is capable of are well known to me. I want this record to stand so that when he starts in to malign me, as he will do, my friends will have my answer. Many people may imagine I am inspired by a spirit of malice in writing these things.

Not at all. inspired by a spirit of malice in writing these things. Not at all. I am only giving those who are dear to me a club to pound him with if he ever attempts to blacken me in support of his overweening vanity that leads him to think he is a tin Jesus on horseback. Salisbury claimed the writing was never meant to be made public. It was an insurance policy. But for all of Salisbury's apparent mistrust, he never ended his partnership in the Wild West, and he signed up for more partnerships on things like the creation of Cody, Wyoming.

On Christmas Eve, 1902, Nate Salisbury died at the age of 56 at his home in Long Branch, New Jersey. Buffalo Bill was in London with the Wild West when the very profitable but volatile partnership ended. Salisbury's death left Buffalo Bill in sole control of the Wild West, though managing partner James Bailey

of Barnum & Bailey Circus was still involved in the planning of routes and the logistics of transporting the Wild West from stop to stop. logistics of transporting the Wild West from stop to stop. Bailey was scheduling the Wild West for a four-year tour of Europe, but Bill had deeper problems than even the death of a business partner. His rocky 38-year marriage, which was often filled with heartbreak, was ending. In January of 1904, Buffalo Bill filed papers in a Cheyenne, Wyoming court seeking a divorce from his wife Louisa. Much like the Cody-Salisbury partnership,

Bill and Louisa's marriage had never been an easy relationship. Louisa was from a prosperous St. Louis family, and her highest ambition was a middle-class life of stability and comfort. Her husband had experienced periods of both poverty and wealth, but even when the money flowed, his life was anything but stable. The Wild West brought in millions of dollars per season, but its star invested his portion of the profits in risky ventures, the most prominent of which was, currently, the creation of the town of Cody, Wyoming. As part of the divorce proceedings, Cody swore under oath that he and his partners had so far lost more than $180,000 on building the Cody Canal to irrigate their land in Wyoming. That's the equivalent of more than $6 million today. But the business calamities

were mild compared to the details that the couple were about to reveal about each other. The scandal would shock the public and cause them to view their hero in a new light. 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.

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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.com slash realm. One of Bill's main complaints in his divorce proceedings was that Louisa, who was the deeded owner of their North Platte properties, refused to sign paperwork allowing him to mortgage their home to fund either his town planning venture in Cody or the Wild West show. In addition to this accusation of financial misconduct, Bill accused Louisa of, quote, cruelty. He told the judge she had attempted to poison him on multiple occasions.

Those were the accusations that shocked the public, who had assumed the couple had a stable and happy marriage. Louisa vehemently denied the accusations. In her defense, she painted a picture of a husband who was frequently absent due to his professional commitments and who had a penchant for extramarital affairs. Moreover, she pointed out that her prudent management of their finances and refusal to mortgage their property allowed the family to amass a significant fortune during times when Cody's ventures were less than profitable. The trial was more than just a legal proceeding. It was a media spectacle, with newspapers across the country eagerly reporting every salacious detail and development.

As the trial progressed, it became evident that both parties were keen on airing their dirty laundry in public. Witnesses from both sides gave contradictory testimonies. Those who sided with Bill painted Louisa as a villainous and jealous wife, while Louisa's supporters highlighted Cody's alleged indiscretions and portrayed him as an absent and unfaithful husband. Bill's accusations that he had been poisoned stemmed from a Christmas dinner in 1900, when he said that Louisa served him a concoction called Dragon's Blood, which she purchased from a traveling gypsy. The potion was meant to make him fall back in love with her. Instead, he collapsed to the ground and was unable to move or speak. Louisa responded she had never heard of dragon's blood

and that her husband had collapsed from overindulgence in alcohol, and the judge agreed with her. The couple had nearly divorced 20 years earlier, but they reconciled when their 11-year-old daughter, Ora, suddenly passed away. Now, in the midst of a bitter and increasingly public divorce, their oldest daughter, Arta, died at the age of 38. The Codys had now lost three of their four children. Their son, Kit Carson Cody, died at age five, then Ora and now Arta. Only Irma, who was now 21, remained. Bill sent a letter asking his wife to reconcile for the sake of their daughter's funeral. She responded that Arta

had died of a broken heart because he had filed for divorce under false accusations. There would be no temporary reconciliation. Never for only a while, she wrote to her husband, forever or not at all. In the end, the judge refused to grant Buffalo Bill the divorce. When the trial ended in March of 1905, Bill was still married and had been publicly embarrassed in the media circus. The Masonic Lodge in North Platte considered kicking him out. Newspapers wrote articles commending the judge's decision, and pastors in North Platte preached from the pulpit in praise of the judge. Buffalo Bill escaped the West for the East. He left the court and headed for Paris to rejoin his show, and he wouldn't return to America until 1907.

to rejoin his show, and he wouldn't return to America until 1907. The Wild West's long tour of Europe was profitable but fraught with financial disasters. In 1906, 200 of the show's horses had to be put down during an outbreak of sickness. That same year, Bill's partner James Bailey died. Cody and Bailey had never been friends, but Cody had relied on the circus owner to schedule the Wild West tours, though some people believe Bailey kept the Wild West in Europe so that it wouldn't compete with the circus he had founded with P.T. Barnum. When the Wild West returned to America in 1907, Buffalo Bill was noticeably older. He still wore a wig under his Stetson while performing in the arena, but he gave up the artifice elsewhere. Without Nate Salisbury or James Bailey to help manage the enterprise,

everything was on Cody's shoulders, and Bailey's heirs weren't interested in the Wild West. Cody's shoulders, and Bailey's heirs weren't interested in the Wild West. In 1908, they sold their one-third interest in the show to another performer named Gordon William Lilly, who ran his own Western show under the name Pawnee Bill. Lilly had served as the Wild West's Pawnee translator during their inaugural tour in 1883 and had run his own outfit since 1888. Cody and Lily's combined show was officially called Buffalo Bills Wild West combined with Pawnee Bills Great Far East. Informally, it was known as the Two Bills Show. The Two Bills Show was a return to the success of the Wild West's former glory. Cody and Lily sold out weeks of shows across the United States. John Burke suggested Buffalo Bill announce his upcoming retirement,

and in 1910, the Two Bills launched what was planned as a three-year farewell tour to conclude with Bill's departure for the town of Cody. The retirement tour was a huge financial success. In 1910, Buffalo Bill and Pawnee Bill split profits of more than $400,000, or nearly $13 million today. Lily invested his money in a home and a ranch in Pawnee, Nebraska. Cody kept his losing streak alive by investing in an Arizona gold mine that was run by a swindler who seeded the mine with gold to make it appear more profitable, and then pocketed the money from Buffalo Bill Cody. Bill was afraid that any news of his failure would remind the public of his embarrassing divorce proceedings, so he

refused to press charges against the mine promoter who had duped him. But in the wake of another deflating experience, Bill was about to have one that would be unexpectedly positive. In 1910, he agreed to visit his last surviving daughter Irma and her husband and children in North Platte. Bill hadn't been to the city since the divorce proceedings five years earlier, and Louisa still lived there as well. Irma and family friends urged Bill to visit his estranged wife, but when he went to the house, she refused to leave her room. A year later, he returned to North Platte. This time, Louisa opened the door. Bill entered and she closed the door behind them.

When the door opened again, Bill and Louisa Cody were reconciled. It was likely a moment of elation and relief, but as always seemed to happen, the joy wouldn't last long. Because of the failed mine investment, Buffalo Bill couldn't retire as he had planned after his big farewell tour. He needed to go back on the road again. But to do so, he needed to raise $20,000 to cover his share of the costs of wintering the show's livestock. In 1913, he took a loan from a circus owner named Harry Tammen. In relative terms, given all of Bill's bad business decisions, this one didn't seem to be substantially worse than the others.

But it turned out to be much, much worse. Harry Tammen also owned the Denver Post newspaper, and soon, the paper reported that one of the conditions of the loan was that Buffalo Bill had to leave the Two Bills show and partner with Tammen Circus. When the Two Bills show played in Denver, Harry Tammen filed a series of lawsuits that ended in total devastation for Buffalo Bill Cody. The court seized all of the show's cash and assets to repay Cody's debt. For the first time in 36 years, Buffalo Bill did not own his own show. And worse, he was now a salaried employee of Harry Tammen's circus.

And then came the final nail in the coffin. Two years later, in 1915, Cody ended his employment with Tammen, and Tammen claimed ownership of the name Buffalo Bill's Wild West. Buffalo Bill ended up working with the 101 Ranch in Oklahoma to tour with what he called Buffalo Bill's Pageant of Military Preparedness and 101 Ranch Wild West. It would be Cody's final tour of a live production. But it still didn't mean he was retiring. Bill was well aware of the evolving avenues of entertainment,

and he ventured into the world of filmmaking in the early 20th century. Recognizing the potential of cinema to immortalize the tales of the Wild West, he decided to produce a silent film titled The Indian Wars. The ambitious project was aimed at entertaining and preserving a visual record of the events and personas he had dramatized in his traveling shows. The Indian Wars, produced in 1913, was an attempt to chronicle the significant battles and interactions between Native Americans and U.S. military forces. Given his reputation and connections, he managed to involve actual Native American participants for some of the historic battles, hoping to lend the film an authenticity that would set it apart from other Westerns that were starting to develop. Under Cody's direction, the participants reenacted scenes to provide

audiences a semblance of the actual events. But the film didn't achieve the success Cody had hoped for. His live shows thrived on interaction, drama, and immediacy. It proved to be extremely challenging to translate that energy to silent film. Audiences found it hard to connect with the movie in the same way they did with his traveling show, and over time, most of the nitrate film stock disintegrated. Today, only a few short fragments of the Indian Wars still exist. On November 11, 1916, Buffalo Bill Cody played his final Wild West show in Portsmouth, Virginia. Bill arrived in Denver a week later to visit his sister, May. May's son wrote that his uncle was

Cody visited his ranch but returned to Denver in December to consult with a doctor. His doctor suggested a visit to the mineral water of Glenwood Springs. Bill made the trip, but it was soon apparent that there was nothing that could be done to delay the inevitable. When his return train from Glenwood Springs to Denver stopped in Leadville, Bill was too weak to walk to the gravestone he had placed for Texas Jack on a visit in 1908. Four days later, on January 10, 1917, Buffalo Bill Cody died, surrounded by his wife Louisa, his sister May, and her children. A spot was picked out on Lookout Mountain, west of Denver, outside the town of Golden, Colorado, for Buffalo Bill's burial.

But the winter weather meant the road up to Lookout Mountain was impassable, and the ground where his casket would be laid was frozen solid. Buffalo Bill's body lay in state in the Colorado State House, where governors, dignitaries, and citizens alike paid their respects. Then, his body was quietly stored at a Denver mortuary to await summer and access to Lookout Mountain. Meanwhile, even in death, Bill Cody couldn't rest peacefully. Citizens of Cody, Wyoming were upset. Buffalo Bill sank much of his fortune into the creation of the town, and now its people questioned the choice of the great showman's final resting place. Bill had often told people that he wanted to be buried on Cedar Mountain, prominently perched above Cody. Louisa claimed Bill had picked the spot on Lookout Mountain himself. Their daughter and Bill's sisters and family friends

corroborated her account. But there were rumors that Cody had died penniless, his once vast fortune having dwindled by overspending and mismanagement. And Harry Tammen, who brought on the financial collapse of Buffalo Bill's Wild West, had persuaded Louisa to bury her husband near Tammen's home base of Denver. The rumor was that Tammen paid Louisa $20,000 in cash, the equivalent of more than $500,000 today.

Whether there was a little bribery and collusion, or whether the family was adhering to Bill's final wishes, the burial of one of the most famous people in American history happened in Colorado in June of 1917. Or did it? On June 3rd, 1917, people crowded Denver's streets to watch Bill's casket wind its way up to the top of Lookout Mountain. But in Wyoming, rumors circulated that a couple of men had sneaked down to Colorado during the winter and switched the body of Buffalo Bill for an old ranch hand who bore a striking resemblance to the famous Scout. They had done their work quietly and arrived home a few days later with Buffalo Bill's remains. No one in Denver was ever aware of the switch, so the story went, and the men were able to bury Bill on Cedar

Mountain as he had once requested. But in Denver, there was an open casket, and it was hard to believe that the rumor was true. The casket was carried up to Lookout Mountain as 25,000 people gathered to watch. At that point, it looked like Louisa Cody and the people of Denver had finally put the issue to rest. But they took no chances. When the casket was closed, it was sealed inside a tamper-proof case and encased in concrete and iron. And that should have been the end of it. But of course, it wasn't. and iron. And that should have been the end of it, but of course it wasn't. A few years later,

Bill's niece began telling people, including those in Cody, that the city of Denver had conspired to tamper with her uncle's will, and his final resting place overlooking Denver was not where he wanted to be. Johnny Baker, a longtime Wild West performer whom Bill viewed as an adopted son, had opened a museum near the grave that was dedicated to Buffalo Bill's life and legacy. Now, Johnny paid to dig up Bill's casket and rebury it under 20 tons of concrete. And that surely should have been the end of it. But of course it wasn't. surely should have been the end of it. But of course it wasn't.

For nearly 20 years, it seemed like the spot of Buffalo Bill Cody's final resting place was settled. But in 1948, the Wyoming Foreign Legion offered a $10,000 reward to anyone who could bring Buffalo Bill Cody's remains from Lookout Mountain outside Denver to Cedar Mountain outside Cody.

Legionnaires from Colorado, along with the Colorado National Guard, stationed armed guards at Bill's grave to ensure no one would be able to collect the reward money. And that, blessedly, was the end of the controversy, more than 30 years after Buffalo Bill died. was the end of the controversy, more than 30 years after Buffalo Bill died. Today, half a million people a year visit Buffalo Bill's gravesite at Lookout Mountain, though there are still some who believe that the grave contains the remains of an unknown and uncelebrated ranch hand, while Bill rests on Cedar Mountain in Wyoming, looking down on the city that bears his name. Shortly after Buffalo Bill's death in 1917, the Buffalo Bill Memorial Association was established in Cody, Wyoming, to preserve the memory of the legendary showman. Today, the center of the West houses five museums, the Draper

Natural History Museum, the Whitney Western Art Museum, the Cody Firearms Museum, the Plains Indians Museum, and the Buffalo Bill Museum. The Center continues to promote and examine the impact of Buffalo Bill and his Wild West through museum exhibits, a collection of Cody's personal papers, international symposiums, a guest lecturer series, a monograph print, and a digital research and scholarship platform. Museums dedicated to Buffalo Bill also exist in his birthplace of LeClaire, Iowa, his adopted hometown of North Platte, Nebraska, and his grave at Lookout Mountain in Colorado. When Disney opened its theme park in Paris, France, one of the central attractions at Disney Village was Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. The dinner show, featuring actors dressed as Annie Oakley, Sitting Bull, and Buffalo Bill, entertained visitors from the park's opening in 1992 until the show was permanently closed in 2020 as a casualty of the COVID pandemic. the show was permanently closed in 2020 as a casualty of the COVID pandemic.

The impact of Buffalo Bill Cody and his Wild West show on American culture and the perception of America around the world is beyond measure. The story of the American West, as told by Buffalo Bill, celebrated frontier heroics and thrilling adventures while admittedly glossing over some of the era's nuanced struggles and ethical quandaries. It paved the way for generations of Western novels by Zane Gray and Louis L'Amour, and movies starring John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, and TV shows starring James Arness and Lorne Green. Buffalo Bill Cody was a larger-than-life figure in his own day, and his Wild West was a larger-than-life spectacle that had no equal in its time, and hasn't been attempted since. Next time on Legends of the Old West, we're going back to our ongoing series about outlaws of the West with the stories of Texas train robber Sam Bass

and Cherokee fugitive Ned Christie. That's next time on Legends of the Old West. Members of our Black Barrel Plus program Thank you. 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.