Will’s heart was sick, the shouts seemed strangely out of place. But there was no time for reflection or sentiment, as the enraged Indians resumed their attack. The haggard group, using the cover of the creek banks made their way to Fort Kearny by dawn.
There was little chance to salvage the mission. The cattle had been driven away, the wagons and freight burned. There was nothing to do but bury the three men who had been killed and then return, empty handed to Leavenworth and an uncertain future.

Here might be a good spot to share a revelation from his sister’s memory of Will as a youngster. Spoiler alert…this childhood tale might end up being the most insightful evidence into who Buffalo Bill Cody really was. Their mother had set aside one apartment in their large log house for a playroom, and in that room the germ of his Wild West Show took life. “He formed us into a regular little company”, his sister Helen Cody Wetmore writes, “and would start us in marching order for the woods. He made us stick horses and wooden tomahawks, spears, and horsehair strings, so that we could be cowboys, Indians, bullwhackers, and cavalrymen. All the scenes of his first freighting trip were acted out in the woods of Salt Creek Valley. We had stages, robbers, hold-ups and most ferocious Indian battles.” Will was adamant from those very early days. “I believe I’ll run a show when I get to be a man.”

A fortune teller had previously predicted that Will would one day become President of the United States, to which he answered, “I don’t propose to be President, but I do mean to have a show.” And have a show he did. Most of the feats touted on his resume were all or part fiction, crafted in service to a national calling. The country in the late 1800s was in expansionist mode, the most radical of winds.

President James Monroe proclaimed the United States as protector of the Western Hemisphere. The doctrine became a mainstay of U.S. foreign policy, laying the groundwork for U.S. expansionist and interventionist practices in the decades to come.

Radical Winds ~ by Steve Buttress, posted by Chuck Peek