The Wild West was full of tall tales, legends, and outright lies, but some outrageous stories actually turned out to be true. Did wild camels really roam the plains?
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00The Wild West was full of tall tales, legends, and outright lies, but some outrageous stories
00:06actually turned out to be true. Did wild camels really roam the plains? Oh, give me a home
00:12where the camel roam! Wait, that's not how it goes. But it should have.
00:17Before becoming a Wild West headliner, William Buffalo Bill Cody had been, first, a U.S.
00:22Army scout, then a buffalo hunter who slaughtered thousands upon thousands of animals to feed
00:27railroad workers and their push across the country. There was a side — or maybe not
00:32so side — benefit to killing the buffalo. Native peoples relied on them for survival,
00:37so the fewer there were, we'd do the math. Cody seemed to like that idea, and he loved
00:42the idea of heading back to the battlefield to bank a little more fame, because in 1876,
00:46he stood on stage and announced he was done play-acting and was headed back to the real
00:51thing. He shoved his costume into his saddlebags, just in case, and headed back to war.
00:57Meanwhile, in northern Nebraska, he and members of the 5th Cavalry fought a small band of
01:00Cheyenne at Warbonnet Creek. Before the battle began, Cody took a moment to change back into
01:05his stage costume — black velvet pants and a red silk shirt with silver buttons — and
01:10rode into battle, where he shot and killed the warrior known as Yellow Hair, then scalped
01:14the corpse. Cody claimed that he hoisted the Barbaric Trophy into the air and crowed,
01:19"'The first scalp for Custer!' Nobody else who was there remembered it that way, nor
01:24did any of them know General Custer, who had been killed just a few weeks earlier at
01:28the Battle of Little Bighorn. But who knows? Could have happened."
01:31And we had to hand it to him, because he was the only one that had brains enough to make
01:36that Wild West stuff pay money.
01:38And once he returned to the stage, Cody zealously reenacted his big moment with increasing detail
01:43night after night to sold-out audiences. Somewhere along the way, while holding the actual scalpel
01:48off for the bloodthirsty crowd, Cody promoted him from warrior to chief by way of burnishing
01:53the legend in his own mind. Look, it's just good marketing.
01:58By the time William Wild Bill Hickok became Marshal of Abilene, Kansas in 1871, he already
02:03had a reputation as a gunslinger who was lightning-fast on the draw. But on the night of October 5th
02:08that same year, things went south. Fifty or so rowdy Texans rode into town, and somebody
02:12fired off a shot. Marshal Wild Bill confronted the strangers, and one of them, a gambler
02:17named Bill Coe, drew on him and fired twice, missing both times. Hickok didn't miss. But
02:23before the smoke had cleared, Hickok's deputy, Mike Williams, came running around the corner.
02:28Hickok, who was still in quick-draw mode, thought he was one of the Texans and shot
02:32and killed him. Needless to say, Marshal Hickok was out of a job.
02:36After being fired, as they say, for cause, Wild Bill joined his old friend Buffalo Bill
02:41on stage. But the celebrity life didn't suit him, and he soon returned to the West.
02:45You can be fast, accurate, confident. But something there do well can still get lucky
02:53and lay you out.
02:55On August 2nd, 1876, a drifter named Jack McCall shot him in the back of the head as
02:59he sat playing poker in Deadwood, South Dakota. Hickok had two pair, aces and eights. That's
03:05why we call it the Deadman Team.
03:08Annie Oakley, born Phoebe Ann Moses in Ohio in August 1860, showed a talent for sharpshooting
03:13from a young age. You heard right. She learned to shoot at eight years old. But she wasn't
03:17just playing with guns. She hunted with them and sold or ate what she killed. She truly
03:22had a gift with a gun. In fact, she had such a reputation that when she was 15, a Cincinnati
03:27hotel owner set up a match between her and a traveling sharpshooter named Frank Butler.
03:32Butler was an Irishman who came to the U.S. at 13 and worked a variety of odd jobs before
03:36taking his marksman act on the road. The prize money was $100. That's more than $2,800 today.
03:44Oakley hit all 25 targets, besting Butler, who missed one, but made an excuse. He claimed,
03:49"...I was a beaten man the moment she appeared, for I was taken off guard."
03:54Butler lost the match and the money, but he gained a wife and shooting partner. As Oakley's
03:58fame grew, Frank managed her affairs, and she joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in
04:021885. Butler and Oakley were married for around 50 years and died 18 days apart.
04:09Dakota Chief Sitting Bull was a fearless warrior, spiritual leader, and uniter of
04:13the Sioux against everyone who encroached on their land. But he wasn't immune to the
04:17allure of the stage. He also performed in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in 1885 and
04:22adopted the sharpshooter Annie Oakley as his daughter.
04:25"...where he was paid to ride around the arena once during each performance, promoted as
04:31the Slayer of General Custer."
04:34According to Blood Brothers, the story of the strange friendship between Sitting Bull
04:38and Buffalo Bill, after four months with the show, the Chief decided to return to the Dakota
04:42Territory, saying,
04:44"...the wigwam is a better place for the red man. He is sick of the houses and the noises
04:48and the multitudes of men."
04:50By December 1890, Sitting Bull was living on the Standing Rock Reservation in South
04:54Dakota. He'd become involved with the Ghost Dance movement, a Native American religion
04:59that believed in the imminent return of the buffalo and the resurgence of Native American
05:03culture. U.S. government agents, believing the movement would provoke an uprising, sent
05:07Native police to arrest Sitting Bull. Instead, they shot and killed the Chief after his followers
05:12intervened to stop the arrest. But at the sound of bullets, Sitting Bull's trained gray
05:16horse — a gift from Buffalo Bill — took his cue as if he were still in the Wild West
05:21Show. While the battle raged, the horse bowed, leaped into the air, and cantered in circles,
05:26among other tricks.
05:28The Wild West and the horse are irrevocably intertwined. Horses were first reintroduced
05:33by Spanish explorers in the 1500s — making sure we mention the re part for all of you
05:37there-were-horses-North-America-ones folks out there. But they weren't the only animals
05:42roaming the deserts at the time. In 1856, the U.S. Army brought 31 camels to Texas.
05:48A year earlier, Congress had given then-Secretary of War Jefferson Davis $30,000 to purchase
05:53the animals from North Africa and the Middle East. Davis believed camels would be perfect
05:57for use in the country's westward expansion, being desert beasts of burden and all.
06:02In 1857, Davis shipped 41 more out west. But by the time the Civil War kicked off,
06:08all of the camels had been either sold, slaughtered, or set free. For years afterward and into
06:13the 20th century, wild camels were seen in the deserts of Arizona, California, New Mexico,
06:18and Texas. Wild West camels, for real. The last credible sighting related to that original
06:23batch of camels was in 1929 in California.
06:32For more UN videos visit www.un.org