by Tom Clavin
But there was a consequence that was certainly unintended. To this point, Jesse James and his brother were not much more than Missouri-born Civil War guerrillas who had chosen a life of crime and debauchery. John Newman Edwards, owner of The Kansas City Times, saw the exhibition robbery as an opportunity to create a legend, and of course sell more newspapers. The Times published dozens of articles, many written by Edwards himself, that revealed the “real” story about the James brothers. They were heroes of the South forced to commit crimes to fund resistance efforts against the oppressive northern occupiers, and on top of that, they were modern-day Robin Hoods taking from the rich to give to the poor. Many readers bought this image.
So did Frank and Jesse James. During the ensuing years, they employed different tactics, eschewing robberies like that of the industrial exhibition, and shooting girls, albeit accidentally, and instead taking money belonging to big banks and their fat-cat executives who traveled on trains. For many people, this heroic image persisted until the murder of Jesse in April 1882. (Stories also persisted for years that Hickok did indeed challenge the James gang that day and sent them away empty-handed … but, alas, not true.)
What were the odds that if Hickok had known about a James gang robbery (and shooting) in progress, he would have gotten involved? Pretty good, actually, because of an incident The Topeka Daily Commonwealth reported in its September 28 issue. During one of the days of the industrial exhibition, a large group of Texans demanded that the house band play “Dixie.” The intimidated musicians began to play the tune very much associated with the Confederacy, but many of the spectators objected. The Texans urged the band to continue. Suddenly, Wild Bill Hickok stepped out of the crowd “and stopped the music,” according to the newspaper account. The Texans’ pistols “were presented at William’s head, but he came away unscathed.”
At some point that fall, Hickok relocated to familiar Springfield, Missouri. An unfortunate and inaccurate story had him in Nebraska that November—another example of Hickok, especially as he got older, having no control over his reputation.
That month, three members of the Oglala Sioux were murdered near the Republican River. It was initially believed that Pawnee had killed Whistler, Badger, and Handsmeller because of a conflict over hunting grounds. The U.S. Army was asked to investigate. Its point man in the effort was Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka, one of the more fascinating yet virtually unknown men of his time. Among his exploits was helping to exonerate Hickok of murder.
Schwatka, who was only twenty-three in the autumn of 1872, was born in Illinois but came of age in Salem, Oregon. He attended Willamette University, then West Point, graduating in 1871. He was assigned to the Third Cavalry in the Dakota Territory. At the time of the investigation into the deaths of Whistler and the two other Sioux, he had added to his responsibilities studying both medicine and law. In 1875, he would be admitted to the Nebraska bar association and receive a degree from Bellevue Hospital Medical College in New York.
But first Lieutenant Schwatka had a murder mystery to solve. By questioning farmers and other settlers, he learned that one of the men probably involved, Jack Ralston, was known to be a member of “Wild Bill’s outfit.” The army did not try to keep this revelation hidden, and suddenly, it was being trumpeted that the man-killer Wild Bill Hickok had claimed three more victims. As Schwatka’s investigation continued, however, the prime suspect became William Kress, known as “Wild Bill of the Blue River,” not Wild Bill of everywhere else on the Plains. Ralston confessed that he and Kress had lured the three Indians to their campsite with promises of coffee and food, then killed them to steal their ponies.
Having exonerated Hickok, Lieutenant Schwatka went on to other duties. Though a Renaissance man of the Plains, he was a warrior when the occasion called for it. At the Battle of Slim Buttes, the first significant action against warring Indians after the demise of Custer and his men at Little Bighorn in 1876, Lieutenant Schwatka led the charge that resulted in a resounding victory. But he wasn’t about to confine his talents to the Plains indefinitely. In 1878, he was on the schooner Eothen to the Canadian Arctic, leading an expedition for the American Geographical Society. The adventure included the longest sledge journey ever made by time and distance, encompassing 2,709 miles in eleven months. In 1883, Schwatka led the longest raft journey ever made, 1,300 miles down the Yukon River to the Bering Sea. For these and subsequent feats of exploration, he was honored with medals from an array of countries and scientific societies, and he was accepted as a member of the geographical societies of Bremen, Geneva, and Rome.
Alas, the trips had taken their toll, including making everyday real life seem dull by comparison. The celebrated Schwatka was forty-three when he died in Portland, Oregon, from an overdose of laudanum.
Hickok spent much of the winter of 1872–73 in Independence, confined there by both harsh weather and a lack of motivation to go anywhere else. Then as the winter waned, he was murdered. As The Topeka Daily Commonwealth reported, Hickok was “Riddled with Bullets at Fort Dodge.”
Chapter Sixteen
THE RELUCTANT THESPIAN
In early March 1873, it was reported that Wild Bill had been shot six times by two men in Fort Dodge. Hickok had been drinking with them in a saloon when the lights abruptly went out and gunfire began. The fatal shot was the bullet that struck him in the center of the forehead and was embedded in his brain. A Kansas City newspaper reported the assassins had been friends of Phil Coe, and other newspapers followed suit in printing accounts of the revenge killing.
It was with much surprise that readers of The St. Louis Weekly Missouri Democrat, who along with followers of many other news outlets were mourning the demise of a true frontier legend, read the following, dated March 13: “Wishing to correct an error in your paper of the 12th, I will state that no Texan has, or ever will, ‘corral William.’ I wish you to correct your statement, on account of my people.” The letter was sent from Independence and signed “J. B. Hickok or ‘Wild Bill.’” And he added a PS: “I have bought your paper in preference to all others, since 1857.”
The letter was reprinted in other publications, including the PS. As Wild Bill stated, it would take more than a fake report to kill him off.
Hickok apparently was not scarred enough from his first foray as a stage performer, because less than a year after the Niagara Falls disaster, he signed up for another production. This one would involve his good friend Buffalo Bill Cody and the enterprising novelist and huckster Ned Buntline.
Buffalo Bill had achieved recognition as the best scout on the frontier, and his skills as a tracker and fighter were in much demand. His reputation was further enhanced in 1872 when he became one of only four civilian scouts to be awarded the Medal of Honor for valor in action during battles with Plains Indians. Cody was also sought after by high-level American politicians and visiting foreign dignitaries who wanted him to lead hunting expeditions and regale them with tall tales along the way. Dime novels were being churned out depicting adventures it would have taken Cody at least three lifetimes to undertake.
By this time, he and Louisa had three children—Arta Lucille, Kit Carson, and Orra Maude—so he apparently managed to get home from time to time.1 He recognized, however, that he did have a dangerous occupation, which might not be wise for a man with a growing family. His fame came from being run ragged on the frontier as a scout and campfire entertainer and occasional Indian fighter. Perhaps there was a much safer way to exploit that fame.
A lot of what J. W. Buel wrote in his books, including Heroes of the Plains, has to be taken with a box of salt. However, more credence can be given to the reporting he did in the 1870s when he was a young staffer with The Kansas City Journal. Hickok told him that he was “severely money-bound” because his primary occupation at that time (in addition to assuring people he was still alive) was gambling, and that wasn’t going well. Worse than a streak of bad luck was a new administration in Kansas City that had a dim view of the gaming tables
and the men who sat at them. There were police raids on saloons, some gamblers were picked up and shown the inside of jail cells, and even Hickok was arrested for “vagrancy.” This charge usually meant a man was hanging around with no visible means of support, and with gambling being severely curbed by the cops, that was a pretty accurate description of him.
With his eyesight declining, Hickok could not return to being a peace officer, certainly not an effective one. He had to consider that gunfights he would have easily won before might not turn out so well now. The same went for another former occupation, scouting. The legendary frontiersman was in a bad way with few, if any, prospects.
So when Cody showed up wearing a long fur coat and reeking of newfound success as an entertainer, Hickok paid attention to his pitch. Scouts of the Prairie was the production. Buntline had written it, and he claimed to anyone who would listen that in a fit of inspiration it had taken him just four hours to compose. (After seeing the play in a tryout, some critics wondered why it had taken that long.) Cody explained he had lined up the financing to produce the play and take it on the road. Wild Bill had only to play the part written for him and collect his pay.
It was tempting, but at first, Hickok responded, “No more theatrical business for me.”
Though he was tactful about it, Cody could see that his old friend and mentor was frayed around the edges. His city clothes were not as fine and tidy as before, and he was drinking more than was smart for a man one ambitious gunslinger away from the grave. He pitched the plot again, which was nothing more than Buffalo Bill, Wild Bill, and Texas Jack Omohundro around a campfire telling stories about their experiences as plainsmen, occasionally interrupted by gunfire and chasing off intrusive Indians. Buntline himself would play the leader of a group of white settlers passing through. During a tryout of the evolving production in Chicago, the playwright, who had clearly been drinking, offered one of his well-worn temperance lectures; it was ended when a few stage Indians tied him to a tree to burn him alive, and the audience reacted with wild applause and cheers.
From Cody’s point of view, Scouts of the Prairie had been conceived as a melodrama. But in the Chicago tryout, the play was received as a comedy. Most important: people had paid to see it, and even more of them would do so if the most famous gunfighter in the American West was in it, too.
This was not to overlook Texas Jack’s contributions. By 1872, he, too, was one of the more well-known scouts and Indian fighters on the Great Plains. He and Buffalo Bill had become regular traveling companions, such as when they guided a hunting excursion led by Lieutenant Colonel George Custer that included Grand Duke Alexis of Russia, and they were side by side during the engagement that earned Cody his Medal of Honor. That same summer of 1872, Texas Jack was chosen to lead the Pawnee off their reservation for a big buffalo hunt—which is why Barnett found them together in Kansas City—and Omohundro earned from the natives the name “Whirling Rope.”
It did not take Hickok too long to be seduced by Cody’s invitation and to agree to be a member of the cast. The closer was Cody’s offer of a hundred dollars a week. Not only would that be more than twice what he earned as the marshal in Abilene, but a steady and very good salary would make all the difference in the world right about now for Hickok. And about to turn thirty-six, middle-aged by frontier standards at the time, he had no other prospects.
In addition to withholding that much of the popularity of Scouts of the Prairie was the unintended laughter it created, Cody may not have volunteered that there had been more previous performances of the play than the Chicago tryout. It had lumbered through St. Louis, Cincinnati, Buffalo, and Albany. Then the production plodded on to New York City, playing at a theater known as Niblo’s Garden. A typical review was published in The New York Herald, which opined that “everything was so wonderfully bad it was almost good.” The cast was treated with some gentleness, except Buntline, who displayed “simply maundering imbecility.” The New York World sniffed that the production was “very poor slop.”
This would be Wild Bill’s new adventure. Given that Hickok was soft-spoken and usually not keen on calling attention to himself, Cody could not have expected that his naive friend would improve the quality of Scouts of the Prairie. However, his name and presence should be just what the box office needed.
The play, slightly revised and with Hickok replacing Buntline in the cast, and retitled Scouts of the Plains, was to try again at Niblo’s Garden in New York. Another cast member was not as famous as Hickok and Cody but was a much more accomplished actor. The twenty-six-year-old Giuseppina Morlacchi was born in Milan and attended the La Scala dance school. Her stage debut as a ballerina came in Genoa in 1856, and, known for her skill and beauty, she became a popular attraction on stages on the Continent and in England. She crossed the Atlantic in 1867 to perform in musicals and is credited with being one of the first dancers to introduce the cancan to America. Her popularity increased in the United States, and her manager insured her legs for $100,000, which prompted one newspaper wag to write that the dancer and actress was now “more valuable than Kentucky.”
That Morlacchi was by 1873 a member of the Scouts of the Plains cast could imply that her stage career had not thrived in recent years. The truth was, that August, she had become Mrs. Omohundro, and she preferred to be on the road with her husband, especially one who was so attractive to the ladies. And she was probably paid well for the time, which may have been her top priority. And Cody could be very persuasive, as Hickok learned.
To give the play even more audience appeal, several attractive women were added to the cast, mostly to enter and exit the stage looking attractive. And to supervise the overall production was Arizona John Burke. Also known as Major, Burke never set foot in Arizona, nor did he serve in the military. He was born in New York City, but in 1866, when he was twenty-four, he was in Montana Territory and met Cody, who was then scouting for the Third Cavalry. They became fast friends, and as Buffalo Bill moved more into show business, Burke became his publicist, press agent, manager, and anything else that needed doing. Theatrical folk awarded him the title “Prince of Press Agents.”
Burke remained in those capacities for Buffalo Bill through the Wild West show’s decades of performances, until Cody’s death in January 1917. Burke died penniless and alone three months later. He was buried in an unmarked grave in Mount Olivet cemetery in Washington, D.C., and did not receive a proper headstone until a century later.2
Making his acting debut on a New York stage would be daunting for an experienced thespian, but for a prairie gunslinger, it could be a disaster. Hickok, however, did not skulk into town. According to a reminiscence written by Burke, the famous plainsman arrived at the Forty-Second Street Depot in New York wearing a cutaway coat, flowered vest, ruffled white shirt, salt-and-pepper trousers, string tie, high-heeled boots, and a broad-brimmed hat. He had booked a room at the Brevoort Hotel on lower Fifth Avenue, one of New York’s well-known establishments, where Cody was staying.
Outside the train station, Hickok got into a horse-drawn cab and was taken to the hotel. Cody had told him to pay two dollars, and upon arrival, that is what he did. The driver demanded five dollars. Hickok informed him that all he would receive was the two dollars. Climbing down, the driver growled, “You long-haired rube, I’ll take the rest out of your hide.” A minute later, Hickok was strolling into the hotel lobby, carrying his own suitcase because the bruised and dazed driver was not able to be of further service.
That the legendary shootist Wild Bill Hickok was in New York City was indeed a boost to the box office. He was hailed as something of a celebrity as the well-dressed gunfighter strode to and from the theater on Broadway near Prince Street. Inside Niblo’s Garden, during performances, the audience was witnessing up close not one but two heroes of the American West, detailing their most dangerous and thrilling adventures. A few of them were actually true.
The excitement was not rubbing off on Hickok, though. The opportunity to become the n
ext Edwin Booth did not inspire a personality change. It all seemed kind of silly to be an actor pretending to be someone else and sillier still to be Wild Bill Hickok pretending to be Wild Bill Hickok. And it was annoying that people laughed at his lines. Back in the West, if someone had laughed at him, Wild Bill might have gone for his gun. Now he had hundreds of people laughing—what was so funny about this dumb dialogue, anyway?—and he had to stand up there and take it.
Mostly, the theater brought out the puckish part of Hickok’s personality. To tolerate the swings between boredom and embarrassment, he played practical jokes. In a scene when the “Indians” were supposed to be killed by Hickok, he instead fired blanks from the guns near their legs to make them dance for the audience. There were times he appeared to forget a line, and he watched the other actors squirm as the silence lengthened and the audience began to titter.
Making it worse was that much of Buntline’s hackneyed dialogue remained in Scouts of the Plains. By this point, Cody, Omohundro, and Morlacchi were veteran troupers (and getting paid well enough) that they could figuratively hold their noses and get through each performance. Hickok, troubled by bouts of stage fright, had to bellow each soliloquy, such as the one after a rescue of Pale Dove, played by Morlacchi: “Fear not, fair maid! By heavens, you are safe at last with Wild Bill, who is ever ready to risk his life and die, if need be, in defense of weak and defenseless womanhood!” (He may have recalled that former girlfriend Susannah Moore had proved anything but weak and defenseless during their Civil War exploits.)