An Indian fighter, he was yet the friend of the redskin in many ways, and to-day there is not a man more respected among all the fighting tribes than Buffalo Bill, though he is feared as well.
In his delineation of Wild West life before the vast audiences he has appeared to in this country and Europe, he has been instrumental in educating the Indians to feel that it would be madness for them to continue the struggle against the innumerable whites, and to teach them that peace and happiness could come to them if they would give up the war-path and the barbarism of the past, and seek for themselves homes amid civilized scenes and associations.
Buffalo Bill is therefore a great teacher among his red friends, and he has done more good than any man I know who has lived among them.
Courtly by nature, generous to a fault, big-hearted and brainy, full of gratitude to those whom he feels indebted to, he has won his way in the world and stands to-day as truly one of Nature's noblemen.
One of the strongest characteristics of Buffalo Bill, to my mind, was his love for his mother—a mother most worthy the devotion of such a son. His love and devotion to his sisters has also been marked throughout his lifetime.
When he first came to me he had to sign the pay-roll each month by making the sign of a cross, his mark. He drew a man's pay, and earned every dollar of it.
He always had his mother come to get his pay, and when one day he was told by the paymaster to come and "make his mark and get his money," his face flushed as he saw tears come into his mother's eyes and heard her low uttered words:
"Oh, Willie! if you would only learn to write, how happy I would be."
Educational advantages in those early days were crude in the extreme, and Little Billy's chances to acquire knowledge were few, but from that day, when he saw the tears in his mother's eyes at his inability to write his name, he began to study hard and to learn to write; in fact his acquiring the art of penmanship got him into heaps of trouble, as "Will Cody," "Little Billy," "Billy the Boy Messenger," and "William Frederic Cody" were written with the burnt end of a stick upon tents, wagon-covers, and all tempting places, while he carved upon wagon-body, ox-yoke, and where he could find suitable wood for his pen-knife to cut into, the name he would one day make famous.