The Anatomy of A Buffalo Bill Fact

 February 25, 2025

   Facts can be very elusive, especially old facts, but if you know the right people, you can get darn close to the truth. Take this random photo of Buffalo Bill for example.

Buffalo Bill Cody at Lee's Ferry, circa 1892

(that's Cody in the checked vest)

   In our archives, the photo is ID simply as it is listed above, but that doesn't tell us why he was there. So, I searched my blog archives and found this:

November 12, 2004

   Minnesota Mike and I went up to Carefree at lunch time to see Brian Label's and Bill Welch's new store Cowboy Legacy Gallery. Wow! It really has some cool stuff. Saddles, big artwork by the likes of John Moyers (Cowboy Artist), Donna Sickle Howells and oldtime Western posters (at $4,500 a pop!), spurs, guns, sculpture, and some pretty cool old photos including a series of Buffalo Bill crossing with a Mormon wagon train at Lee's Ferry. Begged Bill to allow us to scan them for a future True West article and he brought them down and Robert scanned them.

   I also sent an inquiry to Paul Andrew Hutton who is very Cody proficient and he sent me some new info that he knew off the top of his head, so I started a caption to run in the magazine, like this: 

   Apparently Buffalo Bill was somewhat anti-Mormon (he appeared in an anti-Mormon play), but he had a change of heart with an 1892 expedition to the Grand Canyon to explore the area as a possible nature preserve; along the way they were hosted by several Mormon families. After the expedition, Cody praised the hospitality and piety of the Mormons. This was the beginning of an evolving friendship that culminated in Buffalo Bill encouraging Mormon settlement in the Bighorn Basin of Wyoming.

   From there, Paul Hutton contacted Paul Fees, who then weighed in with this comment:

    "Yes, that's WFC (William F. Cody) during his expedition in the Kaibab.  Guided by a Young, he led a group of Englishmen (potential investors) on a hunting trip in 1892 after the BBWW season in England.  You can read all about it in 'Campfire Chats.'  My favorite moment concerns his skill with a lariat."

—Paul Fees

   And another William F. Cody expert added this:

"Here is an incorrectly dated photo in MRL with WFC wearing what appears to be the same vest. It's hard to tell, but the fellow standing far left, in the ferry photo does bear quite a resemblance to Ingraham.

—Sam Hanna 

   Then Paul Fees added these two newspaper reports which lists who was on the outing:

   Fast forward, and to borrow a phrase from Mark Twain:

History Doesn't Repeat Itself,

But It Does Rhyme

   Somewhere I have a photo of myself putting in at Lee's Ferry in 1982 on the Merrill and Jeanne Mahaffey's Artist Recession River Run. I am currently tracking down that photo. Stay tuned.

   The Buffalo Bill at Lee's Ferry photo will be our Opening Shot in our Ghosts of Mountain Meadows issue. And we will end our coverage with Will Bagley's addendum, in his stellar book, "Blood of The Prophets" about the find by a National Park Service volunteer at Lee's Ferry, on January 22, 2002, who uncovered a "lead sheet" allegedly inscribed by John D. Lee and buried under several inches of debris near the fireplace inside Lee's Ferry Fort on the Colorado River. The lead sheet appears to be a hoax, but, as Bagley points out, the spelling, syntax and sentiments are vintage John Doyle Lee. I am also searching for this document.

Boze Knows: Guidance From A Geezer

"You need to fail at something, and if you fail enough you will find what you are really good at."

—BBB