Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman
The
format of Patrick T. Holscher's book On
This Day in Wyoming History
encourages his reports of historical facts as though they were
tidbits of trivia. As a result, his account of Wyoming's history, day
by day, is an easy, entertaining read; occasionally, it also
surprises.
For
example, did you know that, on January 5, 1883, Cheyenne was first
“lighted by electric lights” (5) Neither did I. I'd have thought
the date would have been much later—and I'd have been wrong.
(Electric streetlights would follow on January 15 of the same year
[16].)
Likewise,
I had no idea that a play had been produced “based on Owen Wister's
novel The Virginian,”
but this very drama opened on Broadway in 1904, two years after
Wister's novel was published. What, one might wonder, has the opening
of the play in New York have to do with Wyoming? Simple: “The book,
hence the play, is set entirely in Wyoming” (5).
As
the title of Jodie Foley and Jon Axline book suggests, the authors
serve up a decidedly different dish in their In Speaking
Ill of the Dead:
Jerks in Montana's History.
Who among us has never had the misfortune of knowing a jerk or two?
(Indeed, which of us, on occasion, hasn't been
a jerk?)
Montana's
had its fair share. Two of them, Boone Helm and John Johnston, better
known, in some circles, as “Liver-Eatin' Johnston,” were known
for the proclivity for consuming human flesh. Boone was, indeed, a
cannibal, the authors report, whereas “Johnston was a cannibal by
reputation only” (62).
It's
difficult to discern which was the “jerk” in the strange story
the authors tell about Bear's Rib and Sir St. George Gore, an English
baronet who journeyed to the United States to hunt the country's
abundant wildlife.
When
Gore and his party of thirteen men trespassed on the sacred lands of
the Sioux, Bear Rib's war party surrounded the interlopers. Instead
of killing Gore and his men on the spot, Bear Rib let them leave
along the same path they'd followed onto the Sioux's lands, but first
made them surrender “their weapons, their equipment, their horses,
their clothing, and their foodstuffs” (28).
For
five weeks, the naked men lived on such delicacies as “roots,
berries, lizards, insects, birds' eggs, and small game,” without
benefit of a cooking fire, and cut “their feet on prickly pear
cactus.” They also alternately froze or “toasted.” Finally,
after traveling in this fashion for nearly three hundred miles, Gore
and his entourage encountered “a hunting band of friendly Hidatsa
tribesmen” who, taking pity upon the bedraggled party, fed them
before leading “them to their camp near Fort Berthold on the
Missouri,” whereupon the baronet and his men, once again clothed,
resumed their Wild West adventures (29).
Buffalo
Bill Cody hired some of the more illustrious men and women of the
Wild West, including Sitting Bull, Annie Oakley, and, at one time,
Wild Bill Hickok. As Buffalo Bill himself (William F. Cody) points
out in his book The
Wild West in England,
Buffalo Bill's Wild West was not a haphazard show; its “standard
program” featured such fare as “racing between cowboys, Mexican
vaqueros, and Indians and horsemanship demonstrations, such as the
roping and riding of bucking horses, and a Virginia reel on
horseback,” and “marksmanship exhibitions . . . made stars of
Annie Oakley” and others (xvi).
In
1887, Buffalo Bill took his show to England, where he and his troupe
toured for a year, giving a command performance for Queen Victoria.
“During its six months' run in London,” the entertainers
performed “fourteen times a week” for audiences of more than
twenty thousand each. Besides the queen, other “distinguished”
guests included future prime minister William Gladstone and Edward,
Prince of Wales (xxiii).
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