The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley (32 page)

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Authors: Glenda Riley

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Women, #History, #United States, #19th Century, #test

BOOK: The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley
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Page 182
guests. One day, she took three of them hunting and for lunch put a bird on a stick, placed a piece of bacon inside for flavoring, and broiled it over the fire. She later remarked, "How they did enjoy that meal!" On another occasion, Annie overheard a New York woman complain, "My, how I wish I were a man so that I could shoot." Annie assured her that gender did not prevent her from learning to shoot and led her to the range. Annie placed a .22-caliber rifle in the woman's hands and taught her how to stand, load, and aim properly. By the end of the lesson, the woman hit a perfect bull's-eye. After that, Annie devoted two hours to classes every morning. She charged no fee and only hoped that women would become "shooting enthusiasts."
Frank liked the Carolina as well. Apparently, one sportperson's paradise was as good as another, especially if his beloved Annie found happiness there. Frank rode, hunted, canoed, and took local Boy Scouts on outings.
Then, during the summer of 1916, Frank and Annie moved to a summer resort, Newcastle-by-the-Sea, near Portsmouth, New Hampshire. At a hotel owned by Harry Priest, the manager of the Carolina Hotel, the Butlers gave trap-shooting lessons. It appeared that the Butlers could happily shift between Cambridge, Pinehurst, and New Hampshire indefinitely. Still, what Annie was thinking remains unclear. She evidently intended to continue an active retirement and still considered the possibility of making films; in January 1916 another special gun had arrived from the Ithaca Gun Company, this one a #4-grade single-barrel trap gun.
As the year unfolded, Annie received more than one portent of coming changes. Newspaper headlines kept the European war, begun in 1914, in everyone's minds. And when Annie and her niece Fern visited Buffalo Bill Cody in New York City, Cody, according to Fern, got tears in his eyes and said, "Annie, I have come to this." The Wild West, victim of a bankruptcy engineered earlier by
Denver Post
tycoons, was no longer Cody's. Both Annie and Fern realized that Cody's end was near.
The year 1917 proved a significant one in Annie's and Frank's lives. They especially grieved the fate of their old friend and champion, William F. Cody. Cody had spent Christmas at his ranch near

 

Page 183
Cody, Wyoming, then returned to Denver and, on the advice of his physician, took the waters at Glenwood Springs. After a few days Buffalo Bill, a bitter and defeated man, returned to the home of his sister, May Decker, on Denver's Lafayette Street. Cody's wife, Louisa, and daughter, Irma, had rushed to his side, as did Johnny Baker. When news spread of his impending death, Boy Scouts stood watch on May's porch. Hourly bulletins on Cody's condition went out while letters, telegrams, and telephone calls poured in. Then, on January 10, 1917, Buffalo Bill Cody died of uremic poisoning.
Cody's death jolted Annie and Frank as well as hundreds of others who had known, worked for, or loved Cody. One of these was Milt Hinkle, a bronc rider with rodeos and such shows as the Buffalo Bill Wild West and Miller and Arlington's 101 Ranch Real Wild West. Hinkle remembered that he was riding horses through sales inspection in Denver in 1917. When he came out of work the night of January 10 and walked toward the stockyards cafe, Hinkle heard newsboys shouting: "Extra! Extra! All about the death of Buffalo Bill!" Hinkle bowed his head in respect for Cody, whom he called "the greatest showman of all time."
Neither Annie nor Frank went to Denver for Cody's funeral. According to Hinkle, Cody lay "in state" in the capitol, and the Elks and Masons gave him a grand funeral. A long procession wound its way through the streets of Denver while Cody's "white horse, with pistols and rifle hung from the empty saddle," walked riderless, and "about one hundred of us cowboys on foot, followed the remains of Colonel Cody." Cody's body then lay in a vault for months while family members argued about where to bury him. Some argued for his birthplace, Iowa; some for his adopted home, Nebraska; and some for the town he founded, Cody, Wyoming. Finally, the
Denver Post
came to the rescue by paying for Cody's burial on Lookout Mountain. According to Hinkle, "It was another scoop for the Denver
Post
."
Annie vented her grief over Cody's death by composing a long, stirring eulogy, which was published in many newspapers, including the one Cody founded, the
Cody Enterprise
. Probably inadvertently, she helped perpetuate the myths that surrounded Cody and his version of the West during his lifetime. And, as

 

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astute as ever, Oakley recognized Cody's heroic image and the impact it would have on people's thinking about western men for generations to come.
He was the kindest, simplest, most loyal man I ever knew. He was the staunchest friend. He was in fact the personification of those sturdy and lovable qualities that really made the West, and they were the final criterion of all men, East and West. Like all really great and gentle men he was not even a fighter by preference. His relations with everyone he came in contact with were the most cordial and trusting of any man I ever knew.
Another part of Cody's mythical western bearing was his legendary generosity, based on, according to Annie, the charitable philosophy ''of the plains and the camp." It was no wonder to her, and others who knew him, that he died a poor man. As Annie wrote, "The same qualities that insured success also insured his ultimate poverty." Cody was so generous and kind-hearted that he could not resist any "mortal in distress"; he even borrowed money to give away to tramps and others in need.
Cody fulfilled beliefs about a true westerner in another way as well. He treated all equally, whether a band of cowboys or an emperor with his entourage. "A teepee and a palace were all the same to him," Oakley remarked, "and so were their inhabitants."
It was little wonder, then, that Cody inspired great loyalty. Oakley stated that she had traveled with Cody for years and watched all kinds of people join and leave his troupe, every one devoted to him. "His word was better than most contracts," she explained. "Personally, I never had a contract with the show after I started. It would have been superfluous."
Oakley also emphasized Cody's ability as a showperson. At the beginning, she wrote, the Wild West was just a loose conglomeration of people and animals who went into a town and gave a show, but "the essential truth and good spirit of the game made it the foremost educational performance ever given in the world." Cody had such a widespread effect on the entertainment industry that "he had hundreds of imitators" even though he "was quite inimitable."
Oakley concluded that Cody's "heart never left the great West." At the end of each day, he sat and watched the setting sun, and he

 

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returned hometo the Westevery time he had the opportunity. "The sun setting over the mountain," Annie finished, "will pay its daily tribute to the resting place of the last of the great builders of the West, all of which you loved and part of which you were."
Cody's death marked the passing of the Wild West era. The halcyon days were done, and Annie's stardom was a thing of the past. If Cody's death was not enough to make Annie feel her own age and mortality, the
New York Tribune
tactlessly stated on January 11, 1917, that she was no longer a "dashing girl of the plains" but a little, old, silver-haired lady who sat and knitted. In an indignant letter dated January 20, Annie responded by detailing a few incidents from her life. "I have," she wrote, "never knitted.'' Instead, she taught women to shoot for "pleasure" rather than for compensation; she also rode and hunted. According to her, a twelve- or fifteen-mile trip made her ''sleep and dream over again of the days when [she] ran bare-footed over hill and dale chasing the wild bees and butterflies or climbing nimbly up a dog-wood tree to pick the finest of blossomes [
sic
]."
Annie added that she had waged a hard fight for recognition in the arena. It had been "uphill work," for there was prejudice against women "to live down." But, thanks to the many "good American people" who gave generously of "their approval and applause," she had surmounted gender barriers. She hoped that her story gave an encouraging message to others who were "just beginning the great battle of life."
Clearly, Annie was far from ready to follow Cody. Nor did she want anyone to think she was an aged has-been, sitting at home knitting. Demonstrating her energy in a series of shooting exhibitions, she essentially gave notice that she remained robust and had no intention of following Cody anytime in the near future. Within a few weeks, another
Tribune
columnist remarked on Oakley's continuing vitality, perhaps by way of apology. On February 8, 1917, he wrote that he could hear the "sharp crack of Annie Oakley's rifle" all the way from Pinehurst, North Carolina.
Then, on February 11, nearly four hundred people assembled at the Pinehurst gun club to watch Oakley shoot. Among them was Martin G. Brumbaugh, governor of Pennsylvania, and his wife, whom Annie regarded as her cousins because her stepfather,

 

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Daniel Brumbaugh, had come from Pennsylvania. According to the
Outlook
, Annie shot up "the entire neighborhood of F. E. Butler, including his cigarettes [which he held in his mouth as targets] and his money [which he held in his fingers] without apparently disconcerting him the least." Annie also shot a potato off Dave's head, scrambled five eggs in midair, cracked nuts, and shot backward by aiming in a mirror. The
Outlook
reporter was even more stunned by her reply to his request for a program. They had no plans, she answered; they just put together "an impromptu shoot" and ran the stunts as long as the audience wanted them.
For the time being, Oakley had forced Americans to remember her. Impending world war would offer another opportunity to exhibit her skills and continuing vitality. The war in Europe continued to pull at the United States, and on April 6, 1917, America declared war on Germany. Americans, hopeful of spreading democracy around the world, described their offensive as the war to end all wars. On June 5, 1917, the first selective service draft registered over nine million men. Food rationing went into effect as well, with President Woodrow Wilson repeatedly calling for an end to "wastefulness and extravagance." The observance of wheat-less, meatless, and butterless days soon spread over the nation. At the Carolina, one March day in 1918, a woman guest gave a stirring speech while three others passed "a bushel basket each" and asked other guests for donations. They raised four hundred dollars for the war effort.
Annie Oakley and Frank Butler also expressed their deep concern regarding the war. In a 1918 poem, titled "Come Across," Frank stated that the issue went beyond democracy; Americans were fighting "For the honor of Old Glory, And to save the U.S.A." A reporter at the
Philadelphia Public Ledger
claimed, probably inaccurately, that Annie had once had the opportunity to avoid the war by hitting Kaiser Wilhelm rather than the cigarette he held in his mouth: ''An American Woman Who Could Have Shot Kaiser, She Leveled Her Rifle Directly at His Head but Hit Only His Cigarette." Frank quipped that he wrote to Kaiser Wilhelm saying that Annie wanted to repeat the shot but that he never got a reply.
On a more serious level, Annie again offered, as she had in 1898,

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