In a previous column (“Buffalo
Bill’s Wild West”) I wrote about the life and public career of
William Frederick Cody a.k.a. Buffalo Bill, the man most
responsible for the modern myth of the American West, and our first
true celebrity, a nineteenth century prototype of an Elvis Presley
or Muhammad Ali. The article ended with his death in Denver on
January 10, 1917.
Buffalo Bill’s immediate post-mortem period is an interesting
addendum to a rowdy life, and doesn’t surprise his aficionados. He
died deeply in debt, and it seems his surviving family (wife
Louisa, daughter Irma, and a small coterie of close relatives; he
had outlived three of his four children) sought more of a legacy
than his will provided.
The legendary impresario had succumbed at his sister May
Decker’s Denver home. After being baptized and received into the
Catholic Church by a Father Christopher V. Walsh on January 9th,
Buffalo Bill spent the last 24 hours of his life receiving friends,
and even playing poker. Maybe he thought God would ante up to be
fleeced by the Plainsman with an inside straight. But God was
holding all the cards that day, as God does, and Buffalo Bill died
of uremic poisoning at 12:05 p.m. He was a month short of his 71st
birthday.
His untimely death 500 miles from his beloved TE Ranch on the
South Fork of the Shoshone River (not to mention his favorite
hangout, the bar of the Irma Hotel in Cody) made international
headlines and presented both an inconvenience and an opportunity
for Louisa Cody. His friends and business associates in Wyoming
urged his immediate retrieval to Cody. After all, he’d helped found
the town in 1896. A local burial site would be a great tourist
attraction.
Though it is not documented, it is believed Buffalo Bill told
his family that when his time came he wanted to be buried on Cedar
Mountain, which is five miles west of Cody, and offers a
spectacular view of the town and surrounding Big Horn Basin. But
some people had other ideas.
Buffalo Bill’s passing in Denver was fortuitous for the city’s
Chamber of Commerce class. Those boosters were quick to grasp the
potential economic benefits of the most famous man in the world’s
remains being permanently interred in Denver or environs. To that
end, Denver’s chief booster, Mr. H.H. Tammen, the owner-publisher
of the Denver Post, was the point man in offering Louisa
Cody $10,000 for the privilege of planting the Plainsman in
Colorado. Roughly fifty years of marriage to the hellraising
showman had made Mrs. Cody into something of a hardened realist,
not to mention a smart businesswoman, so in the end she thought
Tammen’s offer was a swell idea. Put simply, Louisa Cody sold
Buffalo Bill. Even today, this transaction is recalled with
distaste by some of Cody’s first families.
Tammen arranged for Buffalo Bill’s body to lie in state for four
days in the Colorado Capitol Rotunda, where it was viewed by 25,000
people. There was then an elaborate funeral march through downtown
streets, culminating in the deceased’s return to his temporary
domicile at Olingers Mortuary, where he was literally put on ice
and under lock and key for six months while an elaborate tomb was
prepared on Lookout Mountain, thirty miles west. Tammen and Co.
also paid for the tomb site, the work proceeding at a slow pace due
to severe winter weather.
During his six months repose at Olingers, Buffalo Bill was
reembalmed monthly (a total of six times) to maintain that
handsome, rosy-cheeked appearance he had in life. And as in life,
he also enjoyed regular shaves, trimming of his small chin beard
and mustache, and careful grooming of his long, silvery hair. When
it came time for his second funeral and final interment, the Denver
boosters wanted the showman to look as if he had just returned from
a health spa.
Meanwhile, the town of Cody, Wyoming, was in an uproar. Public
meetings were convened, speeches made, and a stalwart posse
assembled and charged with the task of riding to Denver and
repatriating Buffalo Bill. This cream of Cody’s manhood got no
farther than the ranching hamlet of Meeteetse, thirty miles south,
where they were waylaid by a roadside saloon, and after a few
drinks the expedition disbanded. So much for community pride.
ON JUNE 2, 1917 WILLIAM F. CODY was finally laid to rest in the
tomb atop Lookout Mountain. It wasn’t opulently adorned, but —
from a security point of view — was worthy of a Pharaoh. A
six-feet tall granite mausoleum had been placed in a twelve-feet
deep hole, to be sealed with a six-feet deep layer of concrete upon
Buffalo Bill’s interment. This last to discourage any potential
grave robbing of the Cody posse variety.
The daylong funeral procession wound through Denver and up into
the mountains, and is estimated to have been witnessed by some
50,000 people. Three thousand automobiles from all over the United
States followed Buffalo Bill’s white hearse, causing the world’s
first large scale traffic jam.
On the mountain, Tammen had the casket opened for one last
goodbye for those in the immediate proximity. In reality, it was
probably to prove that the Plainsman was actually present in the
box. Buffalo Bill lay fresh and gleaming in the sun.
Standing next to him, Louisa Cody — in black mourning garb —
promptly fainted. The newspapers attributed her swooning to her
being overcome by the warm and sultry day.
