Let's Talk Wyoming
A podcast about Wyoming and everything we talk about including the weather, politics, energy & agriculture, sports & everything else effecting our state.
Let's Talk Wyoming
Rain, Ostriches, and The Man Who Invented the Wild West
Good morning and welcome to let's Talk Wyoming. I'm Mark Hamilton, your host, and today we'll be taking a look at our Wyoming. Fall weather, as always, is beautiful. We'll talk about some happenings here in the state. We'll talk about ostriches and a little bit about Charlie Kirk and finally we'll close out with my favorite my story on Buffalo Bill Cody. Thanks for joining us Taking a look at Wyoming weather here on the 23rd day of September.
Speaker 1:It is sunny out. Everybody that has listened to the podcast before. We've been really dry here in Hot Springs County but we had rain. Woke up Monday morning, got the dogs taken care of for their walks and ended up coming back and the raindrops started coming down and it rained the whole day and part of the night and woke up with the rain gauge showing we got a little over an inch and a quarter of rain, the most rain we've had in some time. Had puddles outside. It was cool. I see it's going to start warming back up, but nothing extreme. We'll get in the low 80s, maybe to 80, high 70s, low 80s later in the day. It doesn't warm up quickly, it stays pretty cool, but definitely fall is in the air. But boy, that rain was just perfect just what we needed around here. I had kind of quit doing real heavy irrigation work around on stuff and just periodically, and it was getting to the point that I really needed to go ahead and get some water on stuff again and this really just made a difference. Nothing better than those rains coming down. They really replenish everything and make a big difference in our area. So hopefully we get a little bit more. But of course we have the farmers up in the Bighorn Basin are starting their beet harvest and they just don't want to get delayed and I don't blame them. But we'll take the rain and with the equipment and the ability that they have to get in those fields and get those beats out, these days they can get after it pretty quickly. So right now the forecast is looking about the same. I noticed this morning it was really evident Take the dogs walking and we go into town and walk and we have been leaving it before six, probably 5, 45. Now we're at 6 30 and it's still dark when we get to town. So the days are just getting crazy. It's going to be seven o'clock or so here before we actually end up with our falling back, which we still won't fall back until November, the first Saturday in November, saturday, sunday, saturday night, sunday in November when we'll fall back. So right now across the state it looks about the same.
Speaker 1:Made a trip down to Cheyenne on Saturday and it is green down there. They had had some clouds that day and had a little bit of a rainstorm. Got to take in part of Cheyenne. Went to two doors down Saturday night in Cheyenne my wife and I and never been down there. It's down by the capital downtown.
Speaker 1:A lot of you listeners have been to Cheyenne. I assume you might have ate their hamburger place and we went down it was pretty close to 7, I would bet between 630 and 7, more like 7. And drove by the place Wasn't sure 100% what street I should say on and went by him. There was a person backing out right in front of the place so I did a quick, threw the one light and went back around and guess what? We got a park right in front of the place and walked in and they really have good customer service there. They take care of all their customers and the gentleman gave us a little bit of a gave me, I should say kind of the rundown about the place and what to order and how they do things. My wife had been there before and I noticed a lot of the kids down there were dressed up and it was the Cheyenne East homecoming so the kids were out for meals and dances later and different events. But it was busy. But we got our hamburgers and fries and drinks and it turned out well and turned out good, enjoyed every bit of it. So great opportunity to get down there.
Speaker 1:Outback not Outback, but Texas Roadhouse, let's just say Outback has had kind of a drop-off, but that used to be a place that we'd like to go up in Billings. But I haven't been to an Outback or a Texas Roadhouse for quite a while. But I've tried to go a couple times, once in Tulsa, oklahoma, once in Dallas no, I should say that was actually in Tempe, the last one I went to, tried to get to, and there's just such a crowd there. It was that same way in Cheyenne that night. I don't know, for some reason the Texas roadhouses are just the popular place in the country. So we'll try to catch it next time and maybe go a little bit earlier. But I've got a good chance to check. Uh, two doors down did a little shop and it's sprouts, got to take in sprouts. My wife hasn't been to the sprouts in cheyenne before, so we went there and got a lot of different items, a little different selection of stuff For a spouse, I guess it's for a different clientele, and it's kind of crazy. We went by King Soopers and noticed on Facebook the next morning there was a murder out front of the place in the parking lot. Somebody shot somebody else and killed that person. So violence in the state capitol in Cheyenne. I guess, wherever you go, you're not going to get away from it with everything going on. So good trip.
Speaker 1:I made the trip back, got back to Thermopolis on Sunday afternoon and my dog, luke, was definitely happy to see us back. He was holding down the fort. Of course he is a Belgian Malinois, he is our what we call corporate security. We know that nobody's going to come to our house when Luke's around. He is very protective, very protective boy and he was happy to see us. And so back into the week. This is another week Again.
Speaker 1:Apple Fest is on Saturday, up at Tensleep. Looks like the weather's going to be good. Had an opportunity to go up on Monday to go up and pull water samples for the camp. The camp is regulated, our water supply is. Everything we do is for the public. We have to follow some guidelines by the epa for our water sampling for all of our locations. So we have to take water samples once a month and get those pulled and then you just have to drive them either to sheridan gillette, but with Energy Labs over in Casper we've started able to send those through UPS. They'll go get them mailed out of Worland that afternoon and they get down to Casper and get the samples taken care of. So we're right at the end of the year. We've got this sampling and then we're going to be shutting the camp down in October. So it starts to get too cold to try to keep the camp going. So just a busy time right now, just trying to keep up with the Cowboys.
Speaker 1:Got a chance to watch some of the Cowboy action on Saturday night. It started way late that night. It they were playing in Boulder against CU. Wyoming's defense looks good but their offense is struggling. It continues to struggle and CU is not having the greatest year. The Cowboys just couldn't get breaks. They stayed close for a long time, got it to 20 to 30. Cu was up 30 to 20. And the cowboys gave up another touchdown. But the cowboys played a good game. Now they've got a tough mountain west schedule, so we'll see how the rest of the season goes. Also just a great win here in Hot Springs County.
Speaker 1:The Thermopolis Bobcats took on Kemmer and came out victorious. In that it was a little bit of a mismatch. The Bobcats are playing some good football right now. There will be an action on Friday night. They take on the Lovell Bulldogs. So excited to see how that one turns out because Lovell has always been a nemesis in football for the Bobcats here for quite a few years. And right now I think the Bobcats have the players to compete. So we'll see what happens. But that's a late start. That'll start at 7 o'clock.
Speaker 1:Charlie Kirk saga continues on. They had the Charlie Kirk Memorial Service last Sunday and got a chance to take some of that in. It was really good. I enjoyed it.
Speaker 1:A lot of protesters. I don't understand the divide. Somebody is killed in that situation. People are celebrating, but that was a. I guess the amount of people was just. I don't think they expected that many people. But the impact it has. And on the other side of the coin, if you're watching any social media at all. There has been just numerous different scenarios generated on what actually happened and how Charlie was assassinated assassinated the original premise that the young man shot him from the front and had a confession letter, and everything else. It seems like it's lost total credibility in a lot of areas. They also suddenly, at the college, at Utah Valley University, they suddenly have bricked up the area where the incident happened, which is a little strange, since you would assume that was a crime scene, and just too many holes in the whole thing and a lot of questions involved. And right now our violence seems to be really picking up across the country. We're having one incident after another. It's strange times. I don't know if you're all noticing this, but it is definitely not a good time right now. A lot of bad vibes are out there, and including those bad vibes is something that's happening to the north of us.
Speaker 1:The Canadian government had the plans to exterminate 400 ostriches at a ostrich farm in British Columbia. They had tested them last year that they had bird flu and then they needed to be exterminated, and so they finally got around where the owner wouldn't do it and nothing happened to the birds. They're all fine and so they showed up and of course there were people there to protest it, and I don't know what's going on in Canada, but they went through different scenarios again during the day and they had brought in loads of hay to try to build like a pen, and then the plan was to shoot them from above from a helicopter, but it got to be too late. I saw the picture of the Canadian officials in hazmats suits out in the field Just totally lunatics. And finally the next morning the one of the indian tribes came in and and had a order. The first nations up there have the ability to shut stuff down if they value that animal or whatever the reasoning was. But the government suddenly quit everything they were doing and, as far as I have heard, they are leaving the place and we're moving on. So 400 hostages are gonna have a good day, won't be executed. But kind of shows you the silliness that we have across the country with everything that we're doing.
Speaker 1:Sometimes, again, we just have to sit back and use some common sense on everything that's being presented. The newest one that I saw was they were talking about autism and about Tylenol, the effect Tylenol has on potentially for kids, and it's come to. I mean tylenol is not a good good to take. I saw the one doctor says you should only take that if you have an extreme fever. And they have people on the internet that are out there, because trump said it, that are these women are taking while they're pregnant, taking massive quantities of tylenol. And then they had the gal that took a bunch and she was really in bad shape. They took her to the hospital and she's more or less destroyed her liver and is not going to make it. The last I heard because she was doing this because Trump said you shouldn't take it, so she was proving the point and now she's going to die. Our world has definitely gone off the kilter.
Speaker 1:Today in our history section we'll be going to wildhistoryorg and we'll be looking at one of my favorites Buffalo Bill and the Pony Express. Fame Truth and the Eventing the West, and this is by Tom Ray. Buffalo Bill Cody was just 14 years old, so the story goes. When he made his world-famous ride for the Pony Express, leaving Red Buttes on the North Platte River, near present-day Casper Wyoming, he galloped 76 miles west the three crossings on the Sweetwater River. His route took him along what we now call the Oregon-California-Mormon Trail. There was a station at least, a rough cabin and a horse corral Along the road every 12 miles or so at each station. Buffalo Bill would have jumped off this sweaty horse onto a fresh one. As he dismounted, he drew the makalila, the leather saddle cover with special pockets for mail, from the saddle and threw it over the saddle of the horse that the wrangler brought up. This happened in a matter of seconds. There was no time to lose.
Speaker 1:Pony Express began in the spring of 1860 and lasted for 19 months. Its purpose was to get the US mail across the country as fast as possible. California, a state since 1850, was filling up with white people. The forces that soon would lead to the Civil War were pulling the nation apart. If the United States was going to hold together, there had to be a fast, reliable communication between the West Coast and the centers of power in the East. When he arrived at Three Crossings the story goes on Buffalo Bill found that Miller, the rider who was to take over for him, had been killed the night before in a drunken brawl.
Speaker 1:I did not hesitate for a moment to undertake an extra ride of 85 miles to Rocky Ridge, and I arrived at the later place. On time, buffalo Bill remembered many years later, rocky Ridge was near South Pass. There another rider would have to pick up the westbound mail. Young Bill delivered, but the eastbound mail needed a carrier too to take it back. The way it just came, bill volunteered again. When he got back to Three Crossings the same man was of course still dead. So Bill again transferred to Mochalilla and galloped back to Red Butte. The entire distance supposedly was 322 miles. All in all it was a thrilling ride made by a valiant boy who was a great horseman all his life. By the time he was 50, in fact Buffalo Bill was the most famous man in America. His Pony Express ride was one of the reasons for his stardom. But Bill had things mixed up. For one thing, three crossings and Rocky Ridge are only 25 miles apart, not 85. For a second thing, most importantly, he never did make the famous ride. In fact William F Cody never rode for the Pony Express at all.
Speaker 1:Young Will Cody was born in 1846 in a middle-class family on the Iowa frontier. After moving to Kansas in 1850, the family was thrust into poverty by the violence that then was leading up to the Civil War. Will Cody's father, isaac, was a surveyor, founder of towns, a real estate investor and a locator of land claims. During a dispute at a political meeting, a pro-slavery sympathizer stabbed him. Isaac Cody never recovered entirely from his wounds and died three years later. Young Will meanwhile had to find work to help support his mother and sisters. When he was 11 years old he took a job carrying messages on horseback for the freighting firm of Majors and Russell. He rode from the company's offices in the town of Leavenworth to the telegraph office at Fort Leavenworth three miles away. Majors and Russell soon became Russell's Majors and Waddell, the largest transportation company in the West, which owned stagecoaches, thousands of freight wagons and tens of thousands of horses, oxen and mules to pull them, as well as a network of stations, corrals and employees across the West. This was the company that started the Pony Express system in 1860, because young Will had worked for them briefly when he was 11. It may not seem to him such a stretch later to claim he had in fact ridden for the Pony Express when he was 14.
Speaker 1:Will Cody's real teenage years were troubling, not thrilling. When Congress made Kansas a territory in 1854, lawmakers left it up to the people there to decide whether to allow slavery. Armed men poured in. Some supported slavery, some opposed it. Elections were often violent. For a time, bleeding Kansas, as it was called, had two territorial legislatures One supported slavery, one opposed it and each claimed to be the legal rightful law-making body of the territory. During the late 1850s, Will Cody did not take jobs driving horses and wagons to places as far away as Fort Laramie in Denver. During the 19 months of 1860 and 1861, when the Pony Express was a going concern, he was at school in Leavenworth. Pony Express was a going concern. He was at school in Leavenworth. He could not have been riding back and forth across what is now central Wyoming. At the same time, on the Sweetwater Division of the Pony Express, the Civil War broke out nationwide in April of 1861.
Speaker 1:Sometime in 1862, young Will, consumed by a desire to avenge his father's death, joined the Kansas Red Lakes Anti-S, anti-slavery militia. These men and boys were not regular soldiers. They were unpaid and lived only on what they could steal. According to Lewis Morin's 2005 book Buffalo Bills America, source of most of the biographical material in this article, mostly the Redlegs stole horses and burned farms, more so even that other militias in Kansas and Missouri. They were criminals. They paid little attention to whether the families whose farms they burned were pro or anti-slavery or pro or anti-union. Young Will Cody rode with them for about a year and a half Later in the war he joined a regular Kansas regiment of the Union Army and his soldiering became more respectable.
Speaker 1:After the war he worked in western Kansas for a meat contractor that provided food for crews building the Kansas Pacific Railroad across the state. His job was to kill Buffalo. He became known as Buffalo Bill, one of the several hunters on the plains with that nickname. At the time. He also became friends with a man who held various police jobs in the towns of western Kansas, james Butler Hickok, better known as Wild Bill. Hickok became suddenly famous in 1867 when a reporter wrote an article about him in Harper's Weekly, a national magazine Soon.
Speaker 1:Both Bills were the heroes of his so-called dime novels. Authors of these cheaply made alt paper books used Hickok's and Cody's real name but made up their throwing adventures. Part of the fun for the readers was separating fact from fiction, guessing what was true in the stories and what wasn't. Cody understood this by the early 1870s. Hickok Cody, a friend named Texas Jack Omohundro and Jack's Italian-born wife, gellisipia Morissetta, were appearing together during the winters and stage plays around the West. Many of these they wrote themselves. Plays were full of scrapes, escapes, daring rides, fights, rescues, noble heroes and evil villains the same kind of stuff that thrilled the dime novel readers. At the same time, the Indian wars on the plains were escalating.
Speaker 1:The US Army also needed expert help to find its Indian enemies. Most of this work was done by other Indians and by mixed-race men. They were generally fluent at least in English and their mother's Indian languages, which made them useful as interpreters. Because of their race, the white officers were never entirely comfortable around them. Cody was smart and friendly. The officers liked him because he liked to drink whiskey and tell stories and because he was white. But Cody also was comfortable around Indians in a way that most white officers were not.
Speaker 1:When it came time to chase Indian enemies, cody stuck close to the Indian scouts and stayed out ahead of the troops. When the enemy was found, cody would take the credit for the discovery. Soon the officers were praising him in their official reports and in their conversation with newspaper reporters, and they passed his name along to rich men looking for guides for hunting trips. When General Philip Sheridan arranged for Grand Duke Alexis, son of the Tsar of Russia, to come hunt buffalo in 1872, he made sure his favorite officer, george A Custer, was along on the trip and that Cody was the guide. At Sheridan's suggestion, cody persuaded Spotted Tail, chief of the Lakotas, to visit the hunting camp in western Nebraska with a number of warriors and their families. To entertain the bigwigs, the Indians staged large dances and killed buffalo with bows and arrows from their horseback. Custer and the Duke were also stars of the event. But the newspaper noticed Cody too. He was seated on the spanking charger, one of the columnists wrote, and with his long hair and spangled buckskin suit he appeared in his true character of one feared and beloved for all miles around.
Speaker 1:Cody was learning a lot about fame. He continued his double life, appearing in plays in the winter and scouting for the Army in the summers. He took part in a few skirmishes in the Indian Wars and became part of the plays, and they became part of the plays. He took part in a few skirmishes in the Indian Wars and they became part of his plays. Eventually too, he wore his stage costume when he went out in campaign stage costume when he went out in campaign A few weeks after Custer's defeat and death on the Little Bighorn. In 1876, cody was scouting with the 5th Cavalry in western Nebraska. He was wearing a red shirt with billowing sleeves and silver-trimmed black velvet trousers. When he encountered a Cheyenne warrior named Yellow Hair In the skirmish, cody killed him and scalped him on the spot. He sent Yellow Hair's scalp, war bonnet, weapon shield and home to his wife Louise, by this time living in New York where it was displayed in a store window. Newspapers covered the story. Falling winter he toured with a new play, the Red Right Hand or Buffalo Bill's First Scalp for Custer, implying that Cody's act was the first real revenge.
Speaker 1:After the Custer fight. In 1879, when he was 33 years old, cody published his autobiography. The book smoothed the stories of his early life and expanded his stock driving jobs, supposed pony express service and Indian skirmishes into dramas of frontier nerve pluck and progress. About this time, with the Indian wars and the plains all but over, with the buffalo nearly gone and the plains filling up with cattle, cody must have realized that the demand for his scouting skills would only continue to shrink. But still, america was hungry for the other half of Cody's skills, his skills in the show business.
Speaker 1:In 1883, cody and his partner named William Dot Carver put together a traveling show that was part pageant, part circus, part rodeo, part parade and part huge open-air drama. It was built out of the same thrilling dime novel and stage play episodes Cody now knew as well as the episodes of his own life. Versions of the show known as Buffalo Bill's Wild West ran for more than 30 years, from 1883 to 1916. All over North America and Europe audiences loved it. In the early years, cody found the most efficient way to make money was to park the show in a single spot near a large city, on Staten Island, across the harbor from New York, for example, or in a 30-acre field outside of Paris, and let the crowds come to him. In later years, after the show became well known, the production had to travel constantly to find audiences still new enough to want to pay to attend.
Speaker 1:The show featured mounted Indians attacking a stagecoach or attacking a wagon train and Indians attacking and burning a settler's cabin where the settlers rescued at the last minute by a band of nine men led by Buffalo Bill. The company included as many as 650 people in the largest year Cowboys, indians, buffalo Soldiers, sharpshooters, trick riders and trick ropers, as well as cooks, wranglers, animal trainers and all the laborers needed to set up, take down and move the show Indians played themselves In 1885, they included Sitting Bull, victor of Little Bighorn. Other well-known chiefs and warriors took part over the years too. Among them Spotted Tail, red Shirt and Standing Bear. The show even featured a pre-tan buffalo hunt. Thanks to Buffalo Bill, all these events became central to Americans' ideas and the world's ideas about how the West was settled For. The decade after Cody's death in 1917, they appeared and reappeared still in Western novels and especially in Western movies.
Speaker 1:Year after year and decade after decade, the show seemed friendly, real to its audience. Down to the smallest detail. The show is genuine. Mark Twain, no stranger to the West, wrote to Cody in an unsolicited fan letter in 1884. The word show was never in the show's actual title. It was called Buffalo Bill's Wild West, as though people could depend on it to be genuine.
Speaker 1:Article and year after year, decade after decade, the opening act was one many found most thrilling of all the Pony Express. A rider galloped at full speed to the grandstand and reined his pony back onto its haunches front feet falling in the air. The rider leaped to the ground, lifted the mochila onto the next horse and was off again at a full gallop. The crowd was left breathless. Then people burst into cheer and applause. In their luxurious 10-inch by 7-inch printed programs, audience members could read all about Buffalo Bill's adventures. What did it matter if they were true or not? They seemed true, buffalo stagecoach and his own suburbly, mount Esau, and created an illusion that successfully stood for a reality that has been almost wholly different. In the end, these realities caught up with the star of the spectacle, odie's debt, were so large that he lost his show in 1913. He toured with other shows through 1916 but died broke at his sister's house in Denver in 1917. His legacy, however, is very much alive.
Speaker 1:Promoters in Wyoming and the West have, since the turn of the century, used techniques that Cody taught the world. Cheyenne's annual Frontier Rodeo, still continuing today, was founded in 1897, partly with Cody's Wild West in mind. Let's get up and old time day of some sort. We'll call it Frontier Day. Cheyenne leader editor EA Slack wrote that year. We will get all the old timers together, have the remnants of the cow punchers, come in with a bunch of wild horses, get out the old stagecoaches and some Indians etc. And we will have a lively time of it. Get out the old stagecoaches and some indies etc. And we will have a lively time of it. By 1920 and 1930, dime novels had given way to western movies.
Speaker 1:Tourists were driving regularly to Wyoming to see Yellowstone Park and Cowboys. Articles in the Cody Enterprise urged locals to dress western to supply the visitors with what they came to see, especially during the week of the Cody Stampede. Get on the red shirt and top boots and help put her on wild. On June 1st the locals will be urged to don their eight-gallon hats and buckskin vests and go western for the summer. That promotional tradition remains as strong as ever in Wyoming Roam free. The Wyoming Office of Tourism proclaims today at the top of its website A large part of the West's people came to Rome.
Speaker 1:The most imagined part, the part they most wanted to see, is the West that Buffalo Bill began showing us more than 125 years ago when he let the world believe he really did make those thrilling rides for the Pony Express right across central Wyoming Another outstanding story. There are so many stories about Buffalo Bill that I've talked about. Just a generational character, just definitely a legend here in the state of Wyoming. Thanks for joining us today and we hope you enjoy our podcast. As per the code of the west, we ride for the brand and we ride for wyoming. We'll be right back. 3, 2, 1, 3, 2, 1, go, go, go. No-transcript.
