Buffalo Bill in Combat

[conz]

BB, of course, was a real Indian fighter as well as thespian, and Col. King gives a nice account of a combat he witnessed that later became one of BB's most famous stage acts, using the actual implements he personally captured in that fight.

This act also was not well received in New England, it is said, by the pacifists there, who thought it insensitive to the Native Americans and too violent...

Then Captain King: "I jump for my horse, and the vagabond, excited by the shots and rush around us, plunges at his lariat and breaks to the left. As I catch him, I see Buffalo Bill closing on a superbly accoutered warrior. It is the work of a minute; the Indian has fired and missed. Cody's bullet tears through the rider's leg, into his pony's heart, and they tumble in a confused heap on the prairie. The Cheyenne struggles to his feet for another shot, but Cody's second bullet crashes through his brain, and the young chief, Yellow Hand, drops lifeless in his tracks."

This was part of the 5th Cavalry's Warbonnet Creek fight. Then later upon driving these Southern Cheyenne back onto the reservation...

"One and all, they [the Cheyennes] wanted to see Buffalo Bill, and wherever he moved they followed him with awe-filled eyes. He wore the same dress in which he had burst upon them in yesterday's fight, a Mexican costume of black velvet, slashed with scarlet and trimmed with silver buttons and lace - one of his theatrical garbs, in which he had done much execution before the footlights in the States, and which now became of intensified value. Bill had carefully preserved the beautiful war bonnet, shield and decorations, as well as the arms of the young chieftain Yellow Hand, whom he had slain in single combat, and that winter ('76 and '77) was probably the most profitable of his theatrical career."


Kinda macabre entertainment, but did he copy his fashion designs from George Custer?!

Any chance that costume, or Yellow Hands personal effects, are preserved somewhere?

Clair

[elisabeth]

Interesting to speculate how Buffalo Bill's career might have progressed, or not, if Will Comstock hadn't been killed in '68.

Who knows. Perhaps the whole Wild West myth would have been different.

But then again, a showman is a showman, and I suppose the existence of a better scout would have made no difference in the end ...

[grahamew]

I'm sure Yellow hand's 'personal effects' were on display at the BB museum in Cody. Wasn'tt he scalp taken off display in the very recent past?

[Dietmar]

Neither was the name of the Cheyenne who got killed Yellow Hand, nor was he a "young chieftain", so you have to decide for yourself how much you believe in the hero story above...

Regards

Dietmar

[Diane Merkel]

Cody's "First Scalp for Custer" is in the possession of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, but it is not on display due to a federal law against displaying human body parts in museums. I don't know if the scalped Indian has been identified.

[grahamew]

Contradictory Legacies of Buffalo Bill Cody's First Scalp for Custer, The
Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Spring 2005 by Hedren, Paul L


findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3951/is_200504/ai_n13602238/pg_1

[clw]

For balance also read the accounts of Warbonnet Creek offered by Beaver Heart, a member of the war party and by Josie Tangleyellowhair who was Yellow Hair's sister. They are in Jerome Greene's book Lakota and Cheyenne, Indian Views of the Great Sioux War, 1876 - 1877.

[conz]

Nice article...here are the particulars:

"The approaching Cheyenne warriors were no less brilliantly attired. King, of Company K. Fifth Cavalry, a key observer and skirmish chronicler, commented how Indian "warfare was never more beautiful." "On you come," he wrote of the Cheyennes, "your swift, agile, ponies springing down the winding ravine, the rising sun gleaming on your trailing war bonnets, on silver armlets, necklace, gorget; on brilliant painted shield and beaded leggings; on naked body and beardless face, stained most vivid vermilion." Foremost among the advancing warriors was Yellow Hair, wearing a feathered bonnet, tin bracelets, a charm, a beaded belt wherein was tucked a scalp of yellow or blonde hair, and a breechcloth fashioned from a cotton American flag.4

Yellow Hair was among a small coterie of warriors, or "wolves," scouting the trail ahead of Morning Star's band. Though identified later as a chief or subchief to enhance the stature of the fight, Yellow Hair was, in fact, simply a capable warrior, joined on the field of battle by Beaver Heart, Buffalo Road, and four others."

I wonder what Cody did with Yellow Hair's blonde scalp that he carried tucked in his belt? Has THAT been preserved somewhere?

Does Yellow Hair's scalp still exist in New York?!

For that matter, I wonder if any Native families still have as heirlooms the dried scalps of any 7th Cavalry Soldiers...

Off the gruesome topic of scalps, what does the wearing of a war bonnet infer about the status of the Warrior?

Clair

[clw]

"In a typical instance, when a warrior had earned enough feathers to make a warbonnet, he invited his most trusted friends to his tipi. After enjoying a meal and smoking the pipe, the friends ceremoniously laid out the feathers and sorted them according to size and pattern. As each feather was selected, the story of the coup performed by the warrior in earning it was retold......... Once the right to wear a bonnet was earned, bonnets could be obtained in other ways -- as a gift, or in trade with a tribe of great warbonnet makers such as the Crows."

"The Indians of the plains could read the feathers of another tribe as well as they could read their own. This meant they ahd a ready means of identifying the enemy's outstanding warriors, who, because they wore their feathers into battle, always posed a daring and deliberate challenge. Thus a warrior who wanted to make a name for himself could easily choose an enemy equipped to test his mettle to the limit."

Mails, Mystic Warriors of the Plains