Captain Luther North, Pawnee Scout, Letter Relating Buffalo Bill Exploit

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• Lot Description
  ALS, 4pp, approx. 7 x 10.25 in. Columbus, NE, March 5, 1931. To Miss Agness Urbank. Other letters to Agness have surfaced over the years. According to this one, Luther North writes: Your ambition to become an authorous (sic -authoress) is very laudible [sic] and there is no reason why you should not try it but please don’t ask me to be your critic. I am not capable of it. I will just write you letters and tell you stories of things that have happened under my observation.
  
  He continues: Here is one on Buffalo Bill as I have told you perhaps he came up from the South as scout for the 5^th  Cavalry in 1869. I first saw him at Fort McPherson. [S]oon after we met on a campaign against the Hostile Indians. General E.A. Carr was in command. [T]here was the 5^th Cav. of perhaps 1000 men with Buffalo Bill as their Scout, two companies of Pawnee Scout – 100 men- with myself in command (my Brother Maj. Frank North had gone back to the Pawnee agency to enlist a third company of Indians (50 men) and a wagon train of 150 six mule teams….one evening when we were in camp the mule herd about 900 head had been taken across the [Republican] River to graze when the hostile Indians Cheyennes made a dash to try and drive off the mule herd. [T]hey killed two of the herders and then started after the mules. I was camped down the River about a quarter of a mile but there was a grove of timber between us and the mule herd. [W]e ran out and jumped on our horses as fast as we could catch them. I called to my men to get across the River as quick as they could and 8 or ten of them were ahead of me.
  
  Buffalo Bill was camped above me on the River and happened  [sic] to have his horse saddled. [h]e started across the River just behind my men but ahead of me. When I got across and up on the Bank I saw Bill just a little way ahead of me. [H]e was riding on a walk. I soon overtook him and he started his horse on a gallop to keep up with me and said [“]Capt. North your men have got me wrong. [T]hey think I am wild Bill, because I have long hair.[“] [(I]t seemed that the year before the Pawnees and Cheyennes had a fight somewhere in Kansas and it was said that wild Bill Hickock [sic] was with the Cheyennes.)
  
  Well one of my men when he crossed the River with Cody rode up alongside of him and Cody said he commenced talking to him very angryly [sic] and pointed to Cody[‘s] Ivory handled Revolver. [O]f course he Cody couldn’t understand him 9he couldn’t speak any Indian Language). [F]inally the Indian reached over and grabed [sic] the Revolver out of Cody’s holster and Rode on after the Cheyennes. Cody told me all of this as we galloped after my men. [W]ell we recovered the mule herd. [W]e managed to overtake and kill two of… the Cheyennes.
  
  [I]t was dark and I called my men together and Cody told me which Indian took his Revolver. [I]t was one of my Sergeants and I asked him what he meant by taking the Longhairs (there [sic] name for Cody) Revolver. [H]e said he had forgotten his Revolver in his hurry and that Cody’s horse was to [sic] tired to overtake the Indians so he asked him to loan him his Revolver, that Cody could not understand him so he took it. I asked him if he knew about wild Bill having been with the Cheyennes the year before when they fought the Pawnees, but he had never heard it. I told him to give Cody his Revolver, which he did. [F]rom that time on Cody and Pawnees became good friends.
  
  I guess I have told you that Cody was a poor shot with a  Revolver…. [much capitalization, punctuation, and breaks are the transcriber’s] Signed Capt.  L.H. North. With cover, also in North’s hand. 
  
  Luther Hedden North (1846-1935) was born in Ohio, but the family moved to Nebraska in 1856. After his father froze to death surveying on Big Papillion Creek, the family moved to Columbus (NE). Luther began carrying mail in 1860 (aged 13 years), about the same time as his older brother Frank went to the Pawnee Agency to work as an interpreter and clerk. Luther worked other odd jobs, such as hauling logs to the sawmill and cattle herding, and in 1862 enlisted in the 2^nd Nebraska Cavalry to fight the Sioux. Manpower for Indian fighting was scarce, since farther East there was a war going on for the unity of the nation. They mustered out the following December, and Luther returned to the family farm, supplemented by freighting and other jobs, until 1866. 
  
  The Pawnee Scouts had been organized to fight with the Americans against their traditional enemies, the Sioux. When the Scouts were reorganized the following year, Luther was commissioned a captain, a title he would use the rest of his life. He was in and out of the unit, as circumstances demanded (the Plains natives – Sioux, Cheyenne or Pawnee - did not fight winter campaigns).
  
  After General Crook’s 1876 campaign, Luther and Frank were mustered out for good. In those few years, there was no part of Indian fighting or scouting that the Norths had not encountered. They knew the “wild West” in its “heyday.” They went into business with William Cody at Dismal River Ranch until 1882. 
  
  Luther had numerous other positions after this, including Deputy Collector of Internal Revenue, County Commissioner (Howard Co.), and more. He married Mrs. Elvira S. Coolidge in 1898 and they returned to Columbus in 1917, where he lived, engaging in public speaking and writing and other part-time pursuits, until his death in 1935.

  Condition

  Folds as expected. Some toning on cover. Toned area on fourth page. Short separations at folds. Overall very good. 
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