Legends of the Old West - NED BUNTLINE Ep. 4 | “The Legend of Buffalo Bill”

Episode Date: August 5, 2020

After the Civil War, Buntline heads west to California in a short-lived effort to support the temperance movement. He makes new friends, and lots of enemies, and meets the scout who becomes the basis for his most successful literary creation. He permanently shapes the image of the American West when he turns a shy frontiersman named William Cody into a legendary celebrity called Buffalo Bill. Join Black Barrel+ for bingeable seasons with no commercials: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join 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

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Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. On the evening of May 19th, 1868, Ned Buntline stood shouting on a stage in San Francisco. People jostled in the doorway in the hope of squeezing into the packed hall. Bundline wore a red, white, and blue costume, possibly trying to look like Uncle Sam. His long red hair was pulled back into a ponytail and tucked under a hat with feathers on it. Everyone was curious. They'd all heard of Ned Bundline's fearful drinking.

It was at least partly responsible for his role in the 1849 Astor Place Riot in New York, where scores of people had been maimed or killed. He'd been drinking heavily when he instigated the St. Louis Riot in 1852, and there were so many other instances that he routinely landed in the newspapers. And so here he was in California, sermonizing on the virtues of not drinking alcohol. For a time, he practiced what he preached, but Ned Bundline was a thrill seeker.

His antics in California earned him the wrath of the temperance party that had sponsored him. It didn't seem to bother him a bit, because in his year and a half on the West Coast, he gathered enough stories to last him the rest of his life. And when he was chased out of the West, he found the man who would actually embody his most famous story idea of all, William Frederick Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill.

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Shopify.com slash realm. From Black Barrel Media, this is Legends of the Old West. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this is a four-part anthology about one of the greatest scoundrels in American history, Ned Buntline, the man who discovered Buffalo Bill Cody and turned him into a celebrity. This is Episode 4, The Legend of Buffalo Bill. Before the Civil War, Buntline's self-imposed exile in the wilderness of upstate New York failed to keep him away from liquor. Whiskey fueled his escapades during the war itself, and it was the reason his wife, Kate, pushed him out of the house and away from their children.

He took an oath of sobriety in Brooklyn, where he joined an organization called the Sons of Temperance. The Sons of Temperance were determined to grow into a new political party. They said the problems of America could mostly be traced to the selling and drinking of alcohol. In the aftermath of the Civil War, some people thought of the Sons of Temperance as a viable party to heal the country. And who better to lead it than a man who was willing to fight for sobriety as hard as he fought for his country? The organization hired Buntline to be its representative in the West. His job was to get people to join the party and to start local chapters.

party and to start local chapters. On that San Francisco stage, Ned Buntline told his audience that he had picked up the booze habit in the Navy and couldn't kick it. He insisted no one could drink just a little. It was all or nothing. But then he shouted that he was a redeemed man. Over time, Buntline added new things to his lectures to make them more entertaining. Over time, Bundline added new things to his lectures to make them more entertaining. He invited local poets and politicians to speak. He invited musicians to perform. He perfected a skit that involved impersonating eight distinctly different people. He used San Francisco as a home base, but he traveled to all the mining towns of Northern California.

He rode in hot, dusty carriages to Sacramento, Petaluma, Auburn, Gold Hill, and dozens of others. He was exhausted, but also exhilarated. He wasn't earning much money from the temperance lectures, but he thought the mission was truly his salvation. He lodged at the stately Sacramento Riverside homes of Templer members and sea captains he'd once known in the Navy. He watched the construction of the Pacific Railroad and gazed at the massive fruit orchards as far as the eye could see. Bundline told one reporter he was so enamored with California that he was going to sell all his possessions and move there permanently. But when Bundline had been in California for about eight months, he started to tire. He was 47 years old. Traveling on dirt roads for hours each day

started to wear on the rider. And people noticed he started spending time with alcohol producers, which was a strange activity for the representative of the temperance movement. Maybe it was for research of some kind. And maybe not. In December 1868, reports of Buntline's bizarre behavior started to appear in newspapers. One in Santa Cruz complained that while he was on stage, he was dressed as an Indian and delivered obscure, boring poems. The paper said he looked as much like a Comanche as a horned toad looked like a Christmas pot roast.

A Stockton newspaper noted that Buntline had added a young female poet to his show. The poet was only 19, and she was the sole support for her siblings. And there were some not so veiled references to Buntline possibly taking advantage of her. While giving a lecture in Vallejo, people noticed that Buntline appeared to be drunk. Eastern papers reported that he was seen in the streets of San Francisco swaying with a bottle of whiskey in his hand. Some said he had started gambling in the popular Faro card games found at saloons. True or not, these rumors didn't impact his writing on the West Coast. The San Jose Mercury News liked his contributions so much they offered him a full-time job. A famous San Francisco literary journal offered him an editor's position. But by the spring of 1869, Buntline realized that organizing California into a dry

state was going to be an uphill battle. Despite the generally good reviews he received, only about 15 to 20 people took the pledge and paid their dues at any given meeting. Thankfully for Buntline, the Sons of Temperance had another job for him. He would be their California representative at their national convention in Chicago that September. On the way back east, Buntline stopped for a time in a mountain village near the California-Nevada border. He stayed at a lodge that belonged to a fraternal organization for minors. He drank with him for a few days, and then he was on his way. As was always the case with Ned, he adapted his speech and writing to

the towns and states in which he found himself. In Nevada, he spoke of the resources of California. In Nevada, he spoke of the resources of California. In Utah, he spoke of the virtues of Mormonism. When he arrived in Chicago in September 1869, he made it clear in his speeches that his love affair with California was over. Using strange and certainly fictional evidence, he claimed that seven-tenths of the population in California went to their graves because of alcohol. He also said California suffered more violent deaths, murders, and suicides than any other place in the country, all of it due to alcohol.

The San Francisco Chronicle had given Buntline every benefit of the doubt when the writer first came to California. Now, it wasted no time pointing out his hypocrisy. Among other things, it called Buntline the hero of 10,000 drunks. Yet the world would soon forget all about Buntline's temperance work. Six weeks earlier, as he traveled from California to Chicago, Ned Buntline met the man who became one of America's biggest celebrities. And Buntline was the man who made it all possible. The novelist met the future Buffalo Bill by accident. In July 1869, Ned Buntline stepped off the train in North Platte, Nebraska. From there, he took a carriage to Fort McPherson. There was a lot going on at Fort

McPherson. Ten days earlier, the U.S. Army's 5th Cavalry had attacked a village of Cheyenne dog soldiers. The Cheyenne had two white captives, and during the fight, one of them was killed by one of the Cheyenne. U.S. Army Major Frank North and his band of Pawnee scouts tricked and then killed Tall Bull, the leader of the Cheyenne. To Buntline, Major North was exactly the hero he wanted to meet and to write about. But Major North had no interest in being anyone's hero. No one really knows exactly what happened next. But according to one tale, the Major supposedly told Buntline,

if you want a man to fit that bill, he's over there under the wagon. Buntline took the Major's advice and walked through an area where recuperating soldiers tried to sleep in fly-infested heat. There, he found a young William Frederick Cody. Cody's autobiography has many factual errors in it, but its explanation of their meeting is the most entertaining. The young scout remembered that Buntline wore a blue military coat of some sort with 20-some-odd medals and badges pinned to it. He called himself Colonel, and he walked with a pronounced limp. Buntline explained that he had planned to deliver a temperance lecture that night, but he thought his time was better used helping Cody and the rest of the scouts fight Indians.

He was definitely angling for an invitation. The group's leader gave the rider a horse, and off they went. The scouting party headed for the South Platte River. It was looking for Native Americans who had supposedly robbed a Union Pacific train and killed some workers and taken some livestock. The scouting party found the trail used by the Native Americans, but soon decided the warriors had too much of a head start. The party abandoned the effort. William Cody then went to Fort Sedgwick, accompanied by Ned Buntline. During the expedition, Buntline asked Cody about a million questions.

The writer was fascinated by the Scout. Cody was already well-known in frontier circles. He was only 23 years old, but he'd already had the adventures of a lifetime. During the Civil War, Cody had served as a Union scout in campaigns against the Kiowa and Comanche. He then enlisted in the 7th Kansas Cavalry, which saw action in Missouri and Tennessee. After the war, he'd continued to work for the Army as a scout and a dispatch carrier, operating out of Fort Ellsworth, Kansas. In 1867, Cody took up the trade that gave him his nickname, hunting buffalo to feed the construction crews of the Kansas Pacific Railroad.

By the time he met Ned Buntline in 1869, Cody had earned a reputation for tracking troublesome Native Americans. The novelist was only too glad to accompany his new friend on these expeditions. He supposedly had done the same thing during the Second Seminole War in Florida nearly 30 years earlier. Still, Ned missed the East Coast and the sophistication it offered. He made his way back home to New York after his entertaining stint in Chicago for the temperance cause. Back at home and vacillating between two wives, Buntline wrote his first Buffalo Bill story. It was printed in a popular weekly newspaper. He titled it Buffalo Bill, King of the Border Men. It was a serial that was released in installments from

the end of 1869 through March of 1870. The story featured the exploits of hero Buffalo Bill and his erstwhile sidekick Wild Bill Hickok. It had villains like Jake McCandless, the leader of a train robbing gang who was based very loosely on a collection of real people. Buntline wrote Buffalo Bill's character as a frontier champion. In his story, Buffalo Bill grew up to avenge the murder of his father by McCandless. Along the way, Bill rescued Lottie, his fictional sister, who was kidnapped by another McCandless gang member.

After seemingly non-stop action scenes set against any number of geographical backdrops, the climax occurred at the Battle of Pea Ridge in Arkansas. Naturally, by the end of the story, Buffalo Bill and Wild Bill killed all the villains, and the heroes left their readers breathless for the next novel. King of the Border Men proved so popular that a prominent New York playwright adapted it for the stage. Bundlein's feelings about it aren't known, particularly since there was no legal protections at the time. But there was no doubt about it. Bundlein's name was suddenly and irreversibly tied to the phenomenon called Buffalo Bill.

Buntline's name was suddenly and irreversibly tied to the phenomenon called Buffalo Bill. The play's successful run in 1871 made the name familiar to theatergoers on the eastern seaboard. Meanwhile, back in Nebraska, Cody himself became a sought-after guy. It was in large part because of his fame from Buntline's story. When Grand Duke Alexis of Russia toured the United States in early 1872, he was thrilled when the real Buffalo Bill was provided as his hunting guide. And the coverage of the event,

plus the success of the play, gave Ned Buntline an idea. He would bring the real Buffalo Buffalo à New York City. Sous-titrage Société Radio-Canada est simple. Les magasins paient Rakuten pour leur envoyer des gens magasinés. Et Rakuten partage l'argent avec vous sous forme de remise. Téléchargez l'application gratuite Rakuten et ne manquez jamais un bon deal. Ou allez sur rakuten.ca pour en avoir plus pour votre argent. C'est

R-A-K-U-T-E-N. When the Grand Duke came to America, his hunting party included James Gordon Bennett Jr. Jr. was the son of Buntline's one-time publishing nemesis. Twenty-five years earlier, Buntline had maliciously libeled Bennett's sister-in-law. The junior Bennett either didn't know or didn't care about his father's rivalry with Buntline. He had taken over the New York Herald, and he wanted the paper to have exclusive Buffalo Bill stories. He invited William Cody to come to New York to see the play that was named after him.

On a cold night in February 1872, Buntline took Cody to see the play in a theater in Lower Manhattan, about a mile from the old Astor Place Opera House. Several theater companies had already performed the play for months. But now, a new prominent actor had taken the role of Buffalo Bill. Cody was in the audience for the man's first performance. During the play, the actor stepped out of character to announce that the real Buffalo Bill was in the audience. The crowd went wild and cheered for Cody to take the stage.

Cody reluctantly got up on stage and awkwardly muttered a few lines. Again, the audience cheered loudly. No one really cared about the words. They just loved the idea of a real Western scout standing right there in front of them. Bennett, Buntline, and the stage manager tried to convince Cody to try acting. They wanted him to be in the play going forward, even if it was just a small role. The scout politely declined. He wanted to go home to the Great Plains and get back to work in the outdoors.

He wanted to go home to the Great Plains and get back to work in the outdoors. Cody continued scouting for the 3rd Cavalry, and Buntline wrote him letter after letter. Buntline begged Cody to come back east and try his luck on the stage. Finally, in December of 1872, Buntline convinced Cody to meet him in Chicago It was a perfect compromise Chicago was closer to Cody in the Midwest And also, Buntline could write a version of a Buffalo Bill stage play That would not compete with the one in New York Buntline promised a friend who owned a Chicago theater

That he could get two real scouts And 20 real Native Americans to appear in the play. But then Buntline was disappointed when Cody arrived with only another scout and no Native Americans. The theater owner was furious. He was about to break the deal. Buntline tried to persuade him that he could find 20 white men to play the parts of the Native Americans. The owner thought about it. It was Thursday, and the play was set to debut on Monday. He asked to see Buntline's script. If the play was good enough, and the Native Americans were only in a couple scenes, then maybe they could fake it.

The problem was, Buntline hadn't started writing the play. Buntline hadn't started writing the play. Buntline was undaunted by the fact that he only had five days to write a three-hour play. He hustled Bill Cody and the other scout into a hotel suite. The other scout was a man named William Omohundro, otherwise known as Texas Jack. Buntline wrote the play in four hours. He had hotel clerks make copies of Cody and Omohundro's parts. They ordered food and whiskey and got to work. According to Cody, the scouts tried their hardest for hours.

Memorizing written lines was not a typical activity for Army scouts. Nevertheless, they committed to memory as much as they could. Buntline hired about 20 local white actors to play the Native American parts. He also hired a renowned Italian ballerina to play a Native American maiden. And of course, to play a Native American maiden. And of course, Buntline wrote a part for himself. He played a trapper. On the evening of December 16, 1872,

all the seats were filled for the play, which Buntline had titled Scouts of the Prairie. The opening line belonged to Cody, but he got stage fright. Buntline tossed him a cue. Cody took the hint, and then the ensemble was up and running. For three hours, the trio, along with the ballerina and the fake Native Americans, showed the audience a completely fictional and highly sensationalized version of the West. And the audience loved it. That first night, the curtain closed to thunderous applause and demands for encores. But theater critics were not kind.

The Chicago Tribune called it stench, and its actors horrible. It even criticized the audience, referring to it as low class. The day after the first performance, the Tribune said the play would never see the stage again. The Tribune was dead wrong. The theater owner added several more performances for that week, and they all sold out. When Buntline and his crew finished their Chicago engagement, they moved on to St. Louis. Cody and Omohundrew found it hilarious when a deputy marshal came to their hotel in St. Louis to arrest Buntline. Apparently, local politicians had not forgotten about Buntline's

role in their riot 20 years earlier and the fact that he had jumped bail. A wealthy friend bonded him out in time to make his stage performance that night. In early 1873, Buntline took Cody and the rest of the ensemble to New York City. The New York Times and other prominent newspapers called the play things like, atrociously bad and a pile of rubbish. But the reviews made no difference to the audience. The show sold out every night. For the people who bought tickets to Scouts of the Prairie, the script itself really wasn't important. They came to see the fine specimens of manhood represented by the handsome scouts. They came to see the fine specimens of manhood represented by the handsome scouts. The audience was comprised of working-class men and women looking for a way to whoop and holler and blow off stress of 14-hour days of hard labor.

But there was also plenty of attendees from middle and upper-class segments of society. One influential Boston critic said the drama appealed to everyone, thanks to Buntline's spicy writing style. And everyone loved Cody. The crowd went wild when he strode up to center stage and fired both pistol and rifle. He dressed in buckskin, a tan suede tunic with fringe around the bottom, and matching pants with fringe running up and down the sides of the pant legs. He wore moccasins on his feet

and a wide brim Stetson hat on top of his dark brown shoulder-length hair. Buntline received mixed reviews for his part as the trapper. Ned had a nasty habit of stopping in the middle of a scene to address the audience directly with a 20-minute lecture on temperance. But despite savage reviews by many critics, Scouts of the Prairie played to a full house during its entire two-year run on the Eastern Seaboard. But despite their success, Cody and Buntline's theatrical relationship ended in June of 1873. Cody thought he should be earning more money for appearing in the play. After all, Buntline and virtually all of the other characters were replaceable.

The real Buffalo Bill was not. Neither of them spoke publicly about the split, and they maintained a friendship until the end of Buntline's life. Buntline didn't want to give up touring just yet. He wrote a new play based on a dime novel he had written the year before called Dashing Charlie, The Texas Whirlwind. He hired a booking agent and two white actors. He borrowed 20 Comanche and Modoc actors from impresario P.T. Barnum. Buntline simply created a new version of Scouts of the Prairie, which looked a lot like the old version. Buntline presented his wild tales of the border to audiences along the Hudson River routes before breaking off to Pennsylvania and Ohio. And it was during this attempt to recapture the magic of the original play

that Buntline's drinking once again caught up with him. It was bad enough that Buntline was drinking again, but he also plied some of his fellow actors with alcohol so he wouldn't have to drink alone. On the way to a performance in Yonkers, New York, he was so drunk that he shot a boat engineer in the leg. In Boston, he was arrested for not paying rent to the theater that ran his play. But drinking and chaos aside, the biggest reason Buntline's new show did not succeed was because he didn't have the real Buffalo Bill. in Buntline's new show did not succeed was because he didn't have the real Buffalo Bill. The explosive popularity and magnetism of William Cody could not be surpassed.

In the mid-1870s, Buntline stopped touring. He went home to the Catskills region of New York, where he had yet another new wife and a huge estate. The rest of Buntline's life was as checkered as it had always been. At least three women claimed to be his legal wife and dragged him through the courts for financial support. But he still wrote as prolifically as he always had. Buntline wrote five more Buffalo Bill dime novels, all of which were massive bestsellers. Unfortunately, Buntline wrote five more Buffalo Bill dime novels, all of which were massive bestsellers. Unfortunately, Buntline profited little from their success.

In an age where there was no copyright protection for creators, publishers simply assigned other writers the task of coming up with new Buffalo Bill adventures. In 1875, one newspaper noted that Buntline's Buffalo Bill stage play was now earning various stakeholders up to $100,000 apiece, and Buntline saw none of that money in his declining years. Edward Zane Carroll Judson, better known as Ned Buntline, died in July 1886. His obituary said his life and career out-romanced his fiction. He'd been a sailor, a soldier, a politician, a scout, and a playwright, and one hell of a troublemaker. Buntline remains best known for his creation of Buffalo Bill, the celebrity. The stage play he created for Cody was absolutely

a precursor to the phenomenon that Cody created, the Wild West Show. In spite of Bunline's many, many flaws, the Western genre owes him a debt of gratitude. The man who created legends somehow became one himself, a red-haired, red-mustached, red-blooded American who could have been a hero or a villain in any of his own stories. Next time on Legends of the Old West, it's an interview with author Julia Bricklin. She wrote this series, and she's the author of the new book, The Notorious Life of Ned Buntline, a tale of murder, betrayal, and the creation of Buffalo Bill.

We're going to dive into other parts of Buntline's life and talk about his enormous influence on the image and mythology of the American West. That's next week on Legends of the Old West. This season was written by Julia Bricklin. Audio editing and sound design by Dave Harrison. 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, Twitter, and Instagram. Thanks for listening.