Buffalo Bill’s Day Out by Michael Bloor

On July 3^rd, 1903, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show gave a performance in Abergavenny, a market town in the Black Mountains of South Wales. The town sits surrounded by seven hills, but the most prominent is The Sugar Loaf (it’s Welsh name is Pen-y-fâl), which looms over the town. At the close of his show, Buffalo Bill annouced to the crowd his intention to climb The Sugar Loaf the next morning. It was said that, the next day, Bill was accompanied up the mountain by half the adults and all the children of the town.

As a child in the 1960s, Evan Hughes had often heard the story of Buffalo Bill’s visit from his grandfather, Arthur Hughes, who had been one of the children with Buffalo Bill that day. Their route up the mountain began by walking up the tramway that carried the stone from the sandstone quarry lying on that edge of the mountain closest to the town. They were guided by the quarry foreman, great-grandfather Rhodri Hughes and his then-young son, Arthur. Bill was interested in the great Clydesdale horses that powered the tramway and were pastured on Rhodri’s smallholding below the quarry. Bill explained to young Arthur that the horses he’d ridden for The Pony Express were much shorter and lighter than the heavy Clydesdales: The Pony Express horses were bred for endurance.

Arthur wanted to know what horses the Indians rode: did Sitting Bull  have a Pony Express horse?

His father told Arthur not to pester Buffalo Bill, but Bill was in a genial mood and happy to indulge a child’s curiousity: ‘Well, Arthur, Plains Indians, like the Lakota Sioux, had similar horses to ours. I was told that the Indians’ horses had originally been bred from wild horses – they would have to have been speedy and tough to survive. And they say that the ancestors of those wild horses had originally been brought to Mexico by the Spaniards. But I can tell you, for sure, that the favourite horse of my great friend, Chief Sitting Bull, was a horse that I gave him as a parting gift when he had to leave The Wild West Show, back in 1885.’

‘Wow, Mr Cody. You and Sitting Bull were great friends?’ 

‘Bet your boots, we were, Master Hughes. Having Sitting Bull’s friendship was a privilege: he was a great leader of his people. The Latoka Sioux would’ve followed him to the ends of the Earth…’

Bill paused to catch his breath: ‘Why is this part of the mountain called “The Dairy,” Rhodri?’

‘Not “The Dairy” sir, but “The Deri.” Deri is an Old Welsh word for Oak tree. And as you can see, oaks still grow here in abundance. As we get higher up the mountain, the oaks get more stunted, but hereabouts they still make great timber – all the lintels in my cottage are made of oak from the mountain.’

They had reached a kind of intermediate plateau, out of which the top of The Sugar Loaf reared in front of them. Arthur, having left a decent interval of silence out of courtesy, renewed his inquisition: ‘Why did Sitting Bull have to leave the show, Mr Cody?’

‘Well, we’d finished the tour, so he went back to his home on the reservation. I wanted the chief to come and tour with me again, but I guess we both knew that those government people wanted him where they could keep an eye on him. And maybe they didn’t like the idea of an Indian becoming world famous. Then, as soon as there was more trouble with the Sioux – that “Ghost Dance” business – they shot him. Called it “resisting arrest.” I wish I could’ve saved him – I tried. I reckon there’s some folks thought that a great leader like that was just too dangerous to live.’

After that, Bill and Arthur and Rhodri fell silent for a spell, listening to the respectful chatter of the following crowd. They were now among a scattering of the stunted oaks that Rhodri had spoken of. Bill asked Rhodri about a couple of circular depressions that they’d passed. Rhodri said he’d been told that they were originally pits used by charcoal burners, but there was no call for charcoal now that the coal mines were operating. More recently, they’d been lined with clay to provide a store of drinking water for the cattle and sheep. Bill asked about grazing for ponies and was saddened to learn that, elsewhere in the Black Mountains, ponies were bred for work down the mines.

At last they reached the summit. It was a clear day; beyond the humps of the mountains and the deeps of the valleys, the open sea glistened in the far distance. Bill stood a long while gazing at the view, with the townsfolk clustered respectfullyround the summit. Bill asked Rhodri about the castle ruins down in Abergavenny. Rhodri told him it was a Norman castle built during the Normans’ long struggle to conquer Wales. The castle was ruined during the civil war in the seventeenth century between the roundheads and the cavaliers. But two hundred years before that, the castle had been besieged and the town had been burned to the ground by the last native Prince of Wales, Owain Glyndŵr, as part of his revolt against the Norman overlords.

‘The prince burned the town, you say. Why did he did he do that?’

‘Perhaps it was accident – houses burnt very easily in those days. But perhaps Owain had it burnt because it was a Norman town, a sort-of-colony. Owain wanted to restore the old Wales of his forefathers.’

Bill turned to Arthur: ‘Well, I guess Sitting Bull would’ve understood that.’

Bloor, Michael

Image: A row of cowboy boots from Pixabay.com