Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 December 1875 — The “Bill” Heroes. [ARTICLE]

The “Bill” Heroes.

The most astonishing crop the plains ever produced was the one of “Bill” heroes. If an ambitious frontiersman named William chanced to see an Indian or kill a few bison, he at once took unto his name an addition, and became a character. But let it not be supposed he was a hero among his companions. To them he ever remained plain Bill, or, at the best, with a Jones or Brown added, as the case might be. I remember one riarticular teamster whose name was William Hobbs. He could nqt have placed a. bullet from his carbine in a bam door at 100 paces. And yet, without any provocation whatever, he seized upon the word California and wore it, although that wonderful State had never, to my certain knowledge, been favored with his presence. This man had not been cut out for a hero. His becoming one was in direct violation of nature’s laws. He was fat, short of wind, red-faced and timid as a hare. As the frontiersmen expressed it, having

never lost any Indians, he could pot be Induced by any consideration to find one. However, by lying in wait for tourists and correspondents, he often managed to get business as a guide. He had aonned a suit of buckskin made in St. Louis, and would state to the gaping stranger : “ My name’s California Bill here; over tAw it’s ’Pache, on ’count of my fightin’ the tribe.” He could not have told one of the latter from a Digger; yet spon the Eastern papers came back with thrilling descriptions of this noted scout and Indian-slayer. “Lon muscles wrapped in buckskin, piercing eyes, a dead shot at redskins,” etc. And yet I have known this dead shot to miss, four times in succession, a bison at fifty yards; and on one occasion, having mistaken a Mexican herder for an Indian, he fled so fast and far that he lost ‘ hat and pistol and ruined his horse. After this he was fain to go East and perambulate Broadway in long hair and dirty buckskin, and be heralded by openeamouthed newsboys as “Forny Bill, the feller what chaws up the Injun nation.” These specimens are also apt to. fall upon some cheap story-writer, who embalms them as heroes, and gives them the entree of saloons and hotels. But when forced back by want to the haunts of the frontier, the breeches of skin, broad hat, and swagger are put away, tad the usual garments of the plain adopted. Out there; where the poverty of spirit lurking beneath is known, a lion’s skin does not change the Buffalo Bill and Wild Bill, whom I met oftgn on. the plains, much more fairly deserved their names. The former I knew first as teamster, then bar-tender and finally scout. He certainly knew more about the plains than anyone I ever met. Wild Bill, during the years that I was cognizant of his actions, filled at intervals the positions of scout, 'saloon-keeper, refugee and Sheriff. The number of persons J knew him to kill was five, three at Hays land two at Abilene. It seems as if such med as Bill were designed by Providence to act as a sort of carnivore for keeping down the increase of their species. In all of my residence upon the frontier, during which time sixty-two graves were filled by violence, in no case was the murder other than a benefit to society.—A. W. IFcftd, in Harper's Magazine for November. —The Hannibal (Mo.) Courier says by a judicious system of levees along certain portions of the upper Mississippi River 40,000 acres of land can be reclaimed that will be worth $1,440,000. —The fattening of cattle as a business has increased in all the Western and Southern States during the year, according to the department report for Octobers