Campaigning with Crook, and Stories of Army LifeKing, Charles
History
Campaigning with Crook, and Stories of Army Life
King, Charles
Crook, George, 1829-1890; Indians of North America -- Wars -- 1866-1895; United States. Army. Cavalry, 5th
James White was his name; a man little known east of the Missouri, but
on the Plains he was Buffalo Bill's shadow. I had met him for the first
time at McPherson station in the Platte valley, in 1871, when he came to
me with a horse, and the simple introduction that he was a friend of
Cody's. Long afterwards we found how true and stanch a friend, for when
Cody joined us at Cheyenne as chief scout he brought White with him as
assistant, and Bill's recommendation secured his immediate employment.
On many a long day's march after that White rode by my side along the
flanks of the column, and I got to know him well. A simpler-minded,
gentler frontiersman never lived. He was modesty and courtesy itself,
conspicuous mainly because of two or three unusual traits for his
class--he never drank, I never heard him swear, and no man ever heard
him lie.
For years he had been Cody's faithful follower--half servant, half
"pardner." He was Bill's "Fidus Achates;" Bill was his adoration. They
had been boys together, and the hero worship of extreme youth was simply
intensified in the man. He copied Bill's dress, his gait, his carriage,
his speech--everything he could copy; he let his long yellow hair fall
low upon his shoulders in wistful imitation of Bill's glossy brown
curls. He took more care of Bill's guns and horses than he did of his
own; and so, when he finally claimed, one night at Laramie, the right to
be known by some other title than simple Jim White--something
descriptive, as it were, of his attachment for Cody and life-long
devotion to his idol "Buffalo Bill," a grim quartermaster (Morton, of
the Ninth Infantry), dubbed him "Buffalo Chips," and the name was a
fixture.
Poor, honest-hearted "Chips"! His story was a brief one after that
episode. We launched out from Laramie on the 22d of June, and, through
all the vicissitudes of the campaign that followed, he was always near
the Fifth. On the Yellowstone Cody was compelled to bid us a reluctant
farewell. He had theatrical engagements to meet in the fall, and about
the end of August he started on General Terry's boat for Fort Buford and
the States. "Chips" remained in his capacity as scout, though he seemed
sorely to miss his "pardner."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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