76

The Night Desk-

'Buffalo Bill' Story
Includes Memphis

Q- Is it true that Buffalo Bill
came to Memphis as a Yankee
soldier?

A- The current issue of Saga
has an account of Buffalo Bill in
which he enlisted in 1864, in the
Seventh Kansas Volunteers,
which was assigned to the command
of Gen. A. J. Smith in
Memphis. It is asserted that Buffalo
Bill solved the Gen. Nathan
Bedford Forrest problem for the
Yankees by disguising himself as
a farm boy, locating Forrest, and
making it possible for Smith to
attack at Tupelo, Miss.

Buffalo Bill was 18 in 1864. His
mother had recently died and
his father had been dead seven
years. He had some experience
with wagon trains, pony express
riding, gold mining and Army
scouting against the Indians but
fame was years ahead. At that
time he had neither killed the
buffaloes that made his name,
nor become the hero of Ned
Buntline's fiction.

He did scout for General Smith
in Tennessee. We know of nothing
to contradict the story of
young William Cody finding Forest
for Smith.

Neither do we know of any
reason to take it at face value.
Buntline, whose real name was
Edward Zane Carroll Judson,
had a most enthusiastic imagination.
Of what Buffalo Bill said
about himself one of his biographers
wrote, "Most of his statements
are inaccurate; many are
preposterous, and he sanctioned
on the part of his publicity agents
a gross indulgence in fiction."