A big crowd gathered to hear them. Burtha talked about the work of the Red Cross and the patriotic duty of Utah’s young men. Edgar, on the other hand, reminisced about his experiences in France and on the Antilles. He goaded the men in his audience to volunteer for the army: “If America’s good enough to live in, it’s certainly good enough to fight for.” The crowd cheered as eleven young men answered his call to arms.
While standing on the street corner, he reached over to Burtha and removed the necklace she had on—a necklace supposedly “of much value as a historical relic.” Demonstrating his skills as a sidewalk salesman, Edgar explained to the eager crowd that he’d be auctioning the necklace and that all bids had to be accompanied by cash. Proceeds from the auction would, he said, be going toward the Red Cross. Everyone who could get near enough rained dollars and other coins into the collecting hat. Bidding terminated at $25—a respectable figure, sufficient to buy a cooker if they’d needed one. Were it not for the high-minded influence of Burtha, from whom he went to enormous trouble to conceal his criminal propensities, Edgar would surely have purloined the cash.
Their afternoon’s recruiting at an end, he and Burtha decamped to the local Red Cross headquarters, together with one of the soldiers from the recruiting office. When Edgar handed over the contents of the collecting hat, the Red Cross treasurer issued him a receipt.
His atypical honesty was rewarded by the arrival that day of a telegram at the U.S. Post Office, just a block from Pantages. The telegram had been sent to Special Agent Leon Bone of the Bureau of Investigation’s Salt Lake branch. It was from the deputy marshal of Rock Springs. WE HAD CHIEF WHITE ELK IN JAIL HERE AS AN IMPOSTOR, he wrote. I THINK THAT HE IS THE SAME MAN THAT IS IN YOUR CITY.
8
With the telegram from Rock Springs came a recommendation. It suggested that Special Agent Bone should wire the police in Laramie for further information about Chief White Elk.
Very likely oblivious to the danger he was in, Edgar gave a couple more recruiting talks on Sunday and Monday. For the second of these, he and Burtha returned to Pantages and addressed the vaudeville audience.
Under the expert guidance of Pantages’s West Coast supremo, plans for their well-publicized marriage were meanwhile advancing. The couple would be tying the knot on Wednesday afternoon. At the request of county, state, and city officials, they were making the ceremony public—scarcely an imposition for an exhibitionist of Edgar’s magnitude. Such was the prestige attached to the wedding that the city’s preeminent jewelry store donated its most expensive ring—an eighteen-carat wedding band, made by America’s foremost jeweler, Tiffany & Co. What’s more, the commander of the Twentieth Infantry Regiment, based a little way outside Salt Lake’s city limits, acknowledged Edgar’s war service by granting the ceremony full military honors. Music would even be provided by the regimental band.
Obtaining wedding attire suitable for someone of his imagined rank was, however, more problematic for Edgar, who told people that his “best Cherokee dress suit” was back in Oklahoma, thousands of miles distant. As one of the Salt Lake newspapers commented, he wouldn’t easily be able to acquire a replacement, because “the ordinary department stores have no buckskin ready-to-wear departments.” So he scoured the city’s curio stores, where he put together what could pass as a Native American outfit. He was wearing it late on Tuesday morning when he and Burtha, accompanied by Frank Newman and Marjorie Lake, made for an address set in a park four blocks south of the Hotel Utah. Several misguided onlookers who saw his beaded buckskin suit estimated its value as “probably enormous.”
Edgar and his companions entered the Salt Lake City and County Building, an immense gray, ecclesiastical-looking Victorian Gothic pile, which dominated that part of town. Beneath vaulted, busily decorated plaster ceilings, they hiked down its long, broad hallways, considerable expanses of oak wainscoting and tiled flooring sliding past. They eventually found their way to the office of the marriage license deputy. Watched by an excited throng of officials, not to mention members of the judiciary and at least one journalist, Edgar and Burtha completed and then signed a marriage license application. The license fee was paid by the local Elks lodge. On their behalf Newman and the county clerk presented the marriage certificate to the soon-to-be-wed couple.
A reporter from the East Oregonian appears to have been on hand to speak with Edgar about the wedding. Seldom able to resist embroidering the fantasies he fed people, Edgar seems to have flaunted his patriotism and imaginary oil wealth by saying he’d bought more than $200,000 of the Liberty Bonds used by the U.S. government to finance the war. Newspapers in locations as far away as North Dakota then propagated the story of his generous purchase.
Right after collecting their marriage license, Edgar and Burtha hotfooted it over to the swank Newhouse Hotel, where they attended a lunch hosted by the Utah branch of the National League for Women’s Service, a civilian organization dedicated to stateside war work. As guests of honor, they were seated on the sweet-pea-and-carnation-decked high table beside a local blueblood and onetime member of the House of Representatives. For Edgar, this offered a bracing contrast to his past, when hotel and boardinghouse dining rooms were typically partitioned by drapes to separate respectable guests from riffraff like him and his coworkers on the vaudeville and medicine show circuits.
Exiting the Newhouse Hotel, Edgar and Burtha caught the tail end of an afternoon unusual even by the capricious standards of Salt Lake’s weather. Bright sunshine alternated with rain, hail, and snow, conditions likely to make Edgar’s feathered headdress look a tad bedraggled. He and Burtha proceeded to a downtown venue where they gave a couple of speeches and auctioned some War Savings Stamps, another new government scheme intended to help pay for the conflict with Germany and her allies. But the self-styled Chief White Elk and Princess Ah-Tra-Au-Saun couldn’t stay for the whole event, because they had to hurry across town to the magnificent, Italianate-looking Orpheum Theatre for a big patriotic rally featuring Mayor Ferry. They’d been assigned their own box overlooking the huge auditorium. In his final engagement of the day, Edgar had the privilege of delivering the closing address, which extolled the contribution of American Indians to the war—a genuine contribution that contrasted with the inauthenticity of Edgar himself.
* * *
—
There was still more reason for Edgar to feel triumphant when he surfaced the next day. A story about his wedding had found its way into the Salt Lake Telegram. “This is the first time that Salt Lake has married a real princess to a real chief at her State Capitol,” the newspaper crowed.
Whether Edgar was about to get married or arrested remained uncertain, though. For his big day, marked by warmer and sunnier weather, he wore his buckskins and feathered headdress. He told people that the buckskins had been given to him by President Wilson’s daughter and that they were worth $1,000, close to the annual income for the average American family at that time. Augmenting his everyday outfit were still more feathers, plus birds’ claws, ermine skins, bells, and a necklace of bison bones. He also had on robin’s-egg-blue moccasins, emblazoned with the Stars and Stripes in beadwork. To round off this display of sartorial understatement, he carried the discordant combination of a tomahawk and a peace pipe.
Not long after lunch he teamed up with his pal Frank Newman and a small entourage for a visit to the Studebaker dealership on South State Street. Included in the group was Marjorie Lake’s husband, Harry C. Lewis, who had been named as Edgar’s best man. Also in the entourage was his nominated ring bearer, J. Fred Daynes, the wealthy, high-society jeweler who had donated a Tiffany wedding band.
At the downtown Studebaker dealership, Edgar was permitted to borrow a car for his wedding. Under the vigilant gaze of a local journalist, he picked a snouty, five-seater Light Six with wooden spokes, long running boards, and a windshield that folded lengthwise. He passed approving comment upon the vehicle’s low, r
akish lines. It retailed at $1,295. The journalist was amused by the sight of what he patronizingly regarded as a man perhaps more accustomed to sitting astride a Pinto pony now ensconced in “paleface’s most civilized and up-to-date conveyance.”
Edgar’s chosen vehicle had maroon paintwork, coincidentally described in the sales spiel as “Indian Red.” He felt its cushioned leather seats and ran his fingers approvingly across its paintwork and varnished mahogany instrument panel. It represented a significant improvement on the horse-drawn wagon in which he’d traveled when he was with Dr. Long’s medicine show. Before he and his cronies drove the Studebaker away, he asked for its soft-top to be lowered. Then they traveled a block and a half to Pantages, where they rendezvoused with the bridal party.
Another dealership had lent Burtha a beautiful National Highway Twelve touring car. Riding in that and other vehicles were the bridesmaids, who comprised three of Burtha’s fellow nurses and most of Marjorie’s chorus line. Marjorie was, naturally enough, the maid of honor.
Further cars carried khaki-clad officers and enlisted men from the Twentieth Infantry Regiment. Among the enlisted men were five Native Americans, representing the Cheyenne, Choctaw, Cherokee, Chippewa, and Delaware tribes. What they made of Edgar and his fancy dress is anybody’s guess, though Private Lincoln Bird of the Cherokee must have known that the self-proclaimed leader of his tribe was a fraud.
Heading the motorcade, assembled outside Pantages, was the thirty-one-piece band of the Twentieth Infantry Regiment. In time to a zestful rendition of Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March,” it paraded along East Broadway, past a hotel that had been shut down for serving liquor to its guests, past Auerbach’s department store, and past an indoor market (THOUSANDS OF THRIFTY SHOPPERS BUY FROM US). Edgar’s Studebaker and the rest of the vehicles followed the regimental band as it turned onto State Street and marched up the shallow incline toward the capitol. Overflowing streetcars and packed automobiles clogged the road. They were crawling in the same direction as thousands of pedestrians, many of them schoolchildren. Incessant ballyhooing by the local newspapers had given them a thirst to witness the closest thing Utah was likely to get to a royal wedding.
Upon passing through the gates at the top of State Street, the procession had to cross the extensive lawns skirting the capitol, its enormous white façade already in view, a domed rotunda projecting above a classical-style colonnade. As Edgar’s Studebaker drew closer to it, a pair of giant American flags came into focus. These were draped from windows above the front steps, around which five thousand excited people had congregated. Edgar had, in all likelihood, never previously appeared in front of such a large crowd, the scale of his success growing with the scale of his lies. Officers from the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, along with the armies of Britain, France, and Serbia, were among his audience. Groucho Marx and other members of the Four Marx Brothers, who so often mined comic diamonds from the ornately garbed pretentions of officialdom, may have been there, too, fresh from rehearsing their show at a local theater.
The dark-suited Mayor Ferry, together with state, county, and city officials, joined Edgar’s entourage at the capitol. Escorted not only by his best man and ring bearer but also by Private Lincoln Bird and the other Native American soldiers, Edgar stood at the top of the front steps, which had been decorated with a line of potted palms. Bright sunshine illuminated them.
Now the regimental band once again began to play the “Wedding March.” Its stately rhythm complemented the moment when Burtha and her bridesmaids emerged from a mass of photographers and a film crew that had been hired by Frank Newman. Burtha was wearing a pale headband, white moccasins, and a dress emblazoned with carved seashells and strips of beaded and tasseled buckskin.
Out of the sunshine, snowflakes fell like confetti as she and the rest of the bridal party climbed the long, wide flight of steps. The snowfall, which had ornamented Burtha’s ascent, stopped just before she reached the top. As a mark of the esteem in which she and Edgar were held, the watery-eyed, septuagenarian Governor Bamberger was there to give away the bride. She and Edgar stood in front of Mayor Ferry, who started declaiming the wedding service. Edgar, meanwhile, had the chance to peer across the sea of faces stretching out before him and to gloat over the spectacular scenario he’d conjured within just seven days of arriving in Salt Lake. Predisposed to treat adult life like a childhood game of “dare,” he may have wondered how much further he could take things. Maybe this wasn’t the pinnacle of his Chief White Elk scam. Maybe this was just the out-of-town tryout for the big production sometime in the future.
When the service reached its climax and Burtha said, “I will,” the crowd gave a massive cheer and the band crashed out the opening bars of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Congratulatory kisses landed on the bride and groom, who were ushered into the governor’s sumptuous office, its walls decked with paintings and tapestries. There, the newlyweds signed the marriage register, a ritual witnessed by the mayor and the county clerk. Sundry officials, plus the bridesmaids and Edgar’s Native American escort, were then invited into the room, where the officials took the opportunity to glad-hand him.
Anyone who noticed the five little stars tattooed on Edgar’s hand as they shook it must have taken them for some form of Cherokee adornment. Yet these supplied him with a constant but fading reminder of the jail time he had served in New York City. Jails were dangerous places for Edgar and fellow grifters, who were sensibly mistrusted by the more violent prisoners from the so-called heavy rackets. Surely using his deception skills by pretending not to be a grifter, he had enrolled in the jail’s offshoot of the Five Points Gang, New York City’s preeminent street gang. Named for the eponymous lower Manhattan slum, this was mainly an Italian American organization.
In what Edgar likely portrayed as a traditional Cherokee gesture of gratitude, he handed Governor Bamberger a bow and a sheaf of arrows as a gift. Afterward Edgar and his bride walked out of the building’s west doors, from where they could see the crowd. He climbed onto a stone pier flanking the stairway, then addressed the throng. Showing why he had so speedily established a reputation as one of the finest orators involved in army recruitment, he spoke about how there were five thousand Indians serving on the front—a figure he’d just plucked from his imagination. He closed by issuing a familiar challenge. White men were exhorted to follow his people’s patriotic example—a sentiment that provoked more cheering.
* * *
—
Donations from some of the wedding guests replenished Edgar’s pocketbook, so he must have been feeling flush when he and Burtha got into the maroon Studebaker. At around five o’clock that evening, they drove back downtown, where they’d arranged to appear onstage at Pantages as part of that evening’s show. The audience greeted them warmly, after which Edgar gave yet another of his recruiting speeches. He and Burtha then moved on to the wedding reception arranged by the local Elks Lodge.
Most of the reception was spent fielding wishes of good luck and prosperity. Later that evening, members of the lodge escorted them to the Hotel Utah, where the Elks had reserved the bridal suite as a wedding present. These well-appointed ground-floor rooms faced the mountainous Salt Lake Temple. Hidden from the newlyweds, however, was the nearby U.S. Post Office building, where the Bureau of Investigation had its Utah base.
Since receiving the telegram from the deputy marshal of Rock Springs, Special Agent Leon Bone had been looking into Chief White Elk’s activities in Salt Lake. Bone had only now reached a conclusion. He decided that the chief had violated no federal laws and should, for that reason, “be permitted to proceed with his good work.” Possibly unaware of the bureau’s renewed interest in him, Edgar had yet again eluded a career-threatening tackle.
* * *
—
Wherever he and Burtha went in Salt Lake over the next few days, they received goggle-eyed attention, their celebrity fortified by coverage of their wedding.
Three times daily, a highlights reel of the ceremony was screened at Pantages. Local press coverage was also plentiful enough to give rise to news items in cities as far away as San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Desperate to associate themselves with Chief White Elk and Princess Ah-Tra-Ah-Saun, high-society women threw ritzy parties in their honor. And the couple received invitations to host auctions for the Red Cross and the War Savings Stamp campaign, from which Edgar pocketed some of the takings.
For all the newsprint devoted to these postnuptial activities, Edgar grew resentful at the lack of attention given him by the Salt Lake Tribune. On Monday, March 18, 1918, he phoned its editor, vented his disappointment, and arranged to visit the Tribune’s offices to “explain his position.” His fit of vain peevishness would have significant repercussions.
9
The punch slammed into Heinie Schuman’s jaw. He was staggered by the impact, which threatened to bring his challenge for the Inter-Mountain Country’s featherweight boxing title to a premature conclusion. But he fought back bravely, landing hard, rapid blows against the champion. These were interrupted only by the bell marking the end of the first round.
Edgar was in the crowd at the Grand Theatre, two dozen blocks south of his hotel. With him that evening—the same evening as his phone call to the Salt Lake Tribune—was Frank Newman. They saw not just the ultimately indecisive title bout, but also four undercard contests. Several of these involved soldiers from the Twentieth Infantry Regiment, which had played such a conspicuous role at Edgar’s wedding.
His trip to the Grand Theatre turned out to be highly profitable. At the suggestion of a friend—likely Newman—the event’s promoter announced to the crowd that Chief White Elk had been carrying out his recruiting work without recompense from the government. “Any contributions would be thankfully received,” the promoter added.
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