by Enss, Chris
The hunting parties William organized and led earned him a considerable amount of money as well as gifts of furs and priceless jewels. He was mindful of providing for his family’s well-being but was prone to mismanaging his income if Louisa did not intercede. He was overly generous to his friends and made poor investment decisions. Louisa was thrifty and, although she liked fine things, lived in moderation.
The buffalo hunt William planned for Russia’s Grand Duke Alexis resulted in not only a substantial fee for his work but also a trip to New York. William had always wanted to visit the East Coast, and out of gratitude for the excellent entertainment Cody had provided, the duke made arrangements for the scout to make the journey.
Had it not been for the fact that Louisa was expecting their third child, she would have accompanied William on the excursion. Nonetheless, she made sure that her husband was ready for his introduction into eastern society. She worked diligently on adding appropriate garments to his wardrobe. “We procured some blue cloth at the commissary and, sewing day and night, I made Will his first real soldier suit,” Louisa recalled in her memoirs, “with a Colonel’s gold braid on it, with stripes and cords and all the other gingerbread of an old-fashioned suit of blues.”14 (“Colonel” was an honorary title that the governor of Nebraska had given to William while serving in the Nebraska National Guard.)
William was well received at every stop along the tour of the eastern cities. He was treated to fine meals with high-ranking government officials and well-known entertainers. He was invited to balls and introduced to troupes of beautiful women, all seeking his favor and attention. Journalists followed William everywhere he went and recorded what he said at the many events he attended, including a performance of a play written by Ned Buntline based on the novel the author had penned about the daring scout.
The audience gave William a standing ovation when they were informed he was in the theater. At Ned’s insistence, he reluctantly made his way to the center of the stage to take a bow. The response prompted the backers of the show to offer William $500 to play himself. “You might as well try to make an actor out of a government mule,” William told the theater manager.15
William extended his trip by ten days and would have continued traveling a bit longer if not for an order from General Sheridan to return to Fort McPherson. Before being rushed off to another uprising between the army and the Indians, he enjoyed a brief visit with his wife and children. He shared the particulars of his trip with Louisa but chose not to elaborate on the ladies he met at the various dances where he was a guest. She learned the details of those outings on her own through the newspaper accounts of his journey.
William wasn’t home long before he was hired on as a scout with another hunting expedition. The time he spent in New York away from the job had made him feel a little insecure about whether he could still do the work. “Why, Mamma,” he joked to Louisa, “I’m such a tenderfoot right now from being away that I’d run if I even saw an Injun!”16
In spite of his brief doubts, he proved himself on the wild plains again and again. In the summer of 1872, he and his scouting partner, Texas Jack Omohundro, led a group of British sportsmen on a hunting trip that was attacked by North Platte Indians. Not only did William protect the sportsmen from being killed or captured, but he also helped them acquire the buffalo they hoped to win. William’s contribution as a scout for the military, combined with his work in helping to keep the peace on the wild frontier, was recognized by the U.S. government when it presented him with the Congressional Medal of Honor.
In between the various hunting trips, military assignments, award ceremonies, and a short-lived stint in politics, William became a father for the third time. Louisa gave birth to Orra Maude on August 13, 1872. Not long after the baby was born, Louisa’s parents urged her to bring the children to St. Louis for a visit, and she agreed.
While his family was away, William decided to accept Ned’s persistent requests to travel with him to Chicago and appear as the lead in the stage play about Cody’s adventures. William wrote Louisa of his intentions, noting, “I don’t know just how bad I’d be at actin’. I guess maybe I better find out.”17
Ned assumed William would make the trip to Illinois with a troupe of westerners in tow (Indians, trappers, riders, and so on) who would participate in the show with him. Texas Jack was the only person with him when he arrived in Chicago. Ned was so excited that William had changed his mind about participating in the play that he wasn’t overly concerned about the additional casting. However, the owner of the theater where the program was to take place was furious—not only because William came to town with just one other person but also because the play itself hadn’t been written yet.
The situation was quickly remedied. Ned penned a melodrama entitled The Scouts of the Prairie; actors, dancers, and set builders were hired. All those who hadn’t answered the call to go west were invited to see the play depicting the wilds beyond the Rockies. On December 12, 1872, audiences flocked to the opening-night performance. The box-office receipts for the debut show were more than $2,800. Ned took his troupe of novice entertainers on the road. Despite the poor reviews the show received for its writing and some of the performances, The Scouts of the Prairie was a financial success.
Louisa was taken aback when William announced he was going to resign as a scout for the army so that he might continue with Ned’s show. “His primary motivation was providing for the children,” Louisa wrote in her memoirs. “He wanted money to send the children to fine schools and give them everything they needed.”18 By the end of the first season, William had earned more than $6,000. It was more money than he had made in all the years he had been a military scout.
His family accompanied him on the road until he purchased a home for them in Rochester, New York, in mid-1873. After making sure Louisa and the children had all they would need until he could see them again, he rode off to rejoin the cast of Ned’s show and enjoy the additional fame the play offered him. He would be on the road for the next three years.
FOURLife in the Limelight
Your third child will be a boy. You should give him the world. He will be famous. His name will be known to all—young and old, rich and poor. People will love and praise him. He may even be president of the United States.
—GYPSY SEERESS’S PREDICTION FOR MARY LAYCOCK CODY, BUFFALO BILL’S MOTHER (1839)
William stared down at a blank piece of paper desperately trying to find the words to describe the devastating circumstances surrounding his family in the spring of 1876. He glanced over at Louisa, stretched out on one of the beds in his daughter’s room at their home in Rochester, New York. For days she had been caring for their three children, all of whom had come down with scarlet fever. The highly contagious illness had forced the youngsters to struggle with acute abdominal pains, sore throats, vomiting, and a rash. The Codys’ eight-year-old daughter Arta and three-year-old Orra were over the worst of the sickness, but five-year-old Kit never recovered. The Codys were crushed.
William had been onstage performing in The Scouts of the Plains in Springfield, Massachusetts, when a telegram from Louisa arrived, informing him that Kit was dying. He left the theater after the first act of the show and made a mad dash home. When William arrived at his son’s bedside, Kit was drenched with sweat from a fever and in a weakened state but managed to embrace his father. Less than twenty-four hours later, the boy passed away.
Overwhelmed by the tragedy, William could neither sleep nor bring himself to share the sad news with his sisters. As he watched his wife and two girls sleeping, he reflected on Kit’s short life and the joy he had brought his parents. According to Helen Cody Wetmore, “Kit was a handsome boy, with striking features and curly hair.” Louisa always dressed him in the finest clothes. He was so adorable that gypsies had carried him away the previous summer. The worrisome incident helped prove that Kit was just as clever as he was handsome. After being kidnapped, he marked the trail the gypsies traveled and
was able to find his way home using the noted path.1
Kit often visited the theaters where William was working. “He watched the seats fill in keen anxiety,” Helen recalled in her memoirs, “and the moment the curtain rose and his father appeared on the stage, he would make a trumpet of his little hands, and shout from his box, ‘Good house, Papa!’”2
Somewhere before dawn after Kit “fell asleep,” as William described it, Cody wrote his sister Julia about what had happened:
April 22, 1876. To my oldest sister Julia, You are the first to write to after our sad, sad loss. Julia, God has taken from us our only little boy. He was too good for this world. We loved him too dearly he could not stay. God wanted him where he could live in a better world. So he sent an Angel of death to take the treasure that he had given us five years and five months ago. And how dear he had grown to us in that time. And when we seen that there was danger of him leaving us how we all clung to him and prayed God not to take him from us our little boy…. The messenger seems not to have been satisfied by plucking the brightest, brightest flower and is still hovering near by thinking whether he shall take the others or not…. Lulu is worn out and sick. It is now three o’clock in the morning. I must write to Lida [a nickname for Eliza], Nellie & May. Goodbye from Brother Will.3
On April 24, 1876, Louisa and William buried their son at Mount Hope Cemetery, not far from their New York home. William tried to comfort himself and his wife with the sentiment that Kit “has joined the innumerable company of the white-souled throng in the regions of the blest.”4
William had a limited amount of time to be with Louisa and his daughters after they buried Kit. The theatrical season needed to be completed, and obligations to his partners in the Buffalo Bill Combination had to be fulfilled. The Buffalo Bill Combination was the name given to the troupe of trick shooters, riders, and performers that had been assembled. The troupe was scheduled to appear in theaters throughout the mid-west during the spring that Cody’s son died. William stayed with his family until the girls had fully recovered and then reluctantly returned to the show. Not wanting to burden Louisa with his grief, he shared his heartache mainly with Julia. According to the biography Julia penned about her brother, Kit’s death had a profound effect on William. “On stage he was dashing, fearless and most effective,” she wrote, “but [after his son died] the thrill of trouping was gone.”5
If William’s heart was not fully in his work, Louisa imagined he would find relief in the arms of one of the many enamored female theatergoers or a cast member. Rumors about William’s overly attentive female fans and coworkers had reached her, and she was hurt and jealous. Before relinquishing his duties with the army, William was never at home for more than six consecutive months at a time. Now that he was an actor, the time had lessened considerably. Louisa’s insecurities about their marriage and her suspicion that William was being unfaithful grew the longer he was away. Years later, Louisa told newspaper reporters that William was “immoral with every woman he met while traveling.”6
Given the problems at home, many of William’s friends and family members questioned his decision to take the show to more cities across the country. Louisa would have preferred a more stable and prestigious line of work for him and suggested he go into politics. “Mama,” William told his wife, “I know I’d be a fizzle at legislatin’.”7
His sisters, particularly Julia, were supportive of his career choice. Since premiering in Ned Buntline’s Scouts of the Prairie with fellow scout Texas Jack Omohundro, William had become an accomplished entertainer. From the beginning of his theatrical venture, Julia had written her brother letters of encouragement. He was always quick to respond, sharing with her news about the various places he visited and the people he met:
May 11, 1873. My Dear Sister … I was ever so glad to hear from you and to hear you are all well. Lulu has not been well for some time, but she is getting better…. We have about 17 hundred relations living near Philadelphia. We had a family dinner while in Philadelphia and there were 42 persons to dine all uncles, aunts, cousins, half cousins and so forth. They are all nice good people they liked to talk me to death about our family. When I get rich I will have you all come and see them—I was going to send some presents to you all but Lulu said she knowed what to buy better than me so I left her to do it. I will surely pay you a visit this summer as I am going to go to Nebraska for a hunt this summer I will probably go to Europe this fall…. Love to all, Your Affectionate Brother, Will.8
William’s first theatrical season came to a close in June 1873. After taking care of his wife and children, he shared his profits with other family members. Although Louisa doubted that William had been faithful to her, she was appreciative that he had provided a more comfortable life for her and their children. She was pleased with their new home in New York and all the other luxuries they now could afford. “Unheard extravagances became ours,” she wrote in her biography. “And Will, dear, generous soul that he was, believed that an inexhaustible supply of wealth had become his forever.”9
If Louisa thought that the house in Rochester would provide William with an incentive to stay home, her hopes were quickly dashed. In addition to performing in a new theatrical production and organizing hunting parties, William led an army expedition through the Bighorn Mountains and aided soldiers in ushering renegade Indians back onto designated reservations. In between each venture, he returned to New York. He cherished the time he spent with his children but did not relish the disagreements he had with Louisa over his long absences.
“Our dispositions were not such as to get along well together,” William confessed years later. “And I knew the longer I staid [sic] we were likely to grow into more trouble or something of that kind.”10 Among the many things that William thought displeased Louisa was his attachment to his sisters. He felt she resented them and their many visits to see him. “There seemed to be some friction in the family,” he recalled in 1904, “and she [Louisa] naturally complained of what appeared to me was fault-finding without a cause when I was doing the best I could…. It kind o’ grated on my nerves and I would pull out to the plains again.”11
William took to the plains after a directive from the U.S. Army advised him that his scouting services were desperately needed in the Dakotas. Upset about the many broken promises made to them, the Cheyenne and Sioux Indians in the Black Hills area had planned to go to war together against the U.S. government. They vowed to stop white settlers arriving on their land. General George Custer and his men had already suffered a major defeat against the Indians at the battle of Little Bighorn, and tensions were running high.
Not long after that conflict, William and the Fifth Cavalry met eight hundred Cheyenne warriors and their chief, Yellow Hand (also known as Yellow Hair), in a heated engagement late in the summer of 1876. The Indians were pushed onto a reservation, ending the uprising in the process. As always, William first shared the news of his exploits with the one person he was closest to, Julia:
September 4, 1876. My Dear Sister—you no doubt will be surprised to hear from me away up in this country. I’m sure you heard I have gone back to my old life that of a scout. Well so I did. I could not remain east while this Indian war was going on without taking up a hand…. I would have come by and seen you but the government was hurrying me up so I could not find time. I did not have time to go to Denver and see Nellie and May. So Ed brought them over to Cheyenne since then I have been continually in the saddle. I have been in several fights and killed 3 Indians during the summer I call my own. That is I never say that I kill an Indian without I get his scalp. I sent two scalps east … and I have one on the boat with me that I killed one week ago yesterday.
My wound is but a slight one. [He suffered an injury in a fight with Yellow Hand and his men on July 17, 1876.] Two weeks at home will fix me all right. Then I am perfect to return to my command.12
William eventually wrote to Louisa and explained the brutal encounter he had had with the Cheyenne chief. She h
ad not heard from him in some time and was worried about his well-being. “I daily lived in hopes of a letter from him,” she noted in her memoirs, “and in dread of bad news from some other source.” The letter she finally received from William was enclosed in a package that contained a disturbing item. “I pried open the lid,” Louisa later wrote, “and a very unpleasant odor caught my nostrils. I reeled slightly, reached for the contents, and then fainted. For I had brought from the box the scalp of an Indian.” William later informed her that the scalp belonged to Yellow Hand. Louisa listened in horror as he described the fight between him and the Indian. Thoroughly disgusted by the barbaric behavior, she made William promise that he would never scalp another Indian. He was making plans for another theatrical production that focused on the scalping when he agreed.13
William’s battle with the Cheyenne, including his duel with Yellow Hand, was a widely publicized event. Writer and actor J. V. Arlington transformed the heated confrontation into a five-act play. The drama also included a reenactment of Custer’s Last Stand. William was quickly hired to portray not only himself but also Custer onstage. The play, entitled The Red Right Hand; or Buffalo Bill’s First Scalp for Custer, opened to rave reviews in Rochester and New York City. The next stop on the tour was California.