August 20, 2025 • 23 mins
07 - Chapter 7. Annie Oakley, Woman at Arms by Courtney Ryley Cooper.
Annie Oakley was without a doubt the greatest markswomen who ever lived. She was christened Phoebe Ann Mosey but was called Annie from childhood. Oakley was the stage name that she assumed when she first started to perform with Frank Butler. From obscure and impoverished beginnings, she made herself into the best known woman of her time, propelled by an indomitable spirit and an uncanny shooting ability. We learn of her enduring marriage to Frank Butler and their first meeting — a shooting match in which the seemingly delicate young girl defeated the professional marksman; her association with Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show and its triumphal tour through Europe and America; the train crash that nearly took her life and her years as an actress and teacher. Yet with all her many successes she preserved her warmth, dedication and integrity. Her story remains to this day one of the grandest to have come out of the Old West.
Annie Oakley was without a doubt the greatest markswomen who ever lived. She was christened Phoebe Ann Mosey but was called Annie from childhood. Oakley was the stage name that she assumed when she first started to perform with Frank Butler. From obscure and impoverished beginnings, she made herself into the best known woman of her time, propelled by an indomitable spirit and an uncanny shooting ability. We learn of her enduring marriage to Frank Butler and their first meeting — a shooting match in which the seemingly delicate young girl defeated the professional marksman; her association with Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show and its triumphal tour through Europe and America; the train crash that nearly took her life and her years as an actress and teacher. Yet with all her many successes she preserved her warmth, dedication and integrity. Her story remains to this day one of the grandest to have come out of the Old West.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter seven of Annie Oakley, Woman at Arms by Courtney
Riley Cooper. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
Read by Barry Eads, Chapter seven. The idea of capitalizing
the Battle of the Little Bighorn, more familiarly known as
the Custer Massacre through the presence of Sitting Bull had
(00:22):
existed for some time with Cody and Salisbury, but the
question of his coming had always been answered with a
decided negative on the part of the old warrior. Sitting
Bull had no desire to be a member of the
Wild West Company. He felt that the white people looked
upon him as an enemy, and for that matter, Tatanka Uataka,
(00:43):
which was his true Sioux name, had no especial reason
for looking upon the pale face with any heightened degree
of affection. Therefore, whenever the question had been broached by
an agent or emissary, Sitting Bull had refused and allowed
that as far as he was concerned, to end the matter. However,
Cody and Salisbury were insistent, and at last, in the
(01:05):
summer of eighteen eighty five sent another emissary to him
with instructions to argue until the medicine man had changed
his mind. This was not an easy task. For three days,
the conversation was entirely one sided. The agent had been
selected with care. It was Sitting Bull's interpreter who had
served on the trip east, when the warrior had met
(01:27):
and adopted Annie Oakley as Little sure Shot, and given
her as a momento of his affections the moccasins worn
by him during the Battle of the Little Big Horn.
These moccasins had been made by the daughter who had died,
and Indian fashion, Sitting Bull could think of no more
fitting present. As has been mentioned, the conversation for three
(01:49):
days had been one sided. The interpreter told of the
Great Bahaska. It was Colonel Cody's Soux name meaning the
long haired man, and the esteem in which the Indians
held Buffalo Bill as a great warrior and a good friend.
He had dilated upon the wonderful experience of traveling about
the country with a Wild West company, the sights to
(02:10):
be seen, the money to be gained, to all of
which oratory Sitting Bull gave a thorough answer. He said, no.
The matter came to a point of despair. Then the
interpreter noticed that whenever a brave of Sitting Bull's command
desired something, he got it. The open sesame seemed to
be to enter Sitting Bull's tent, converse about various topics,
(02:33):
and then taking a position before the cabinet photograph of
Annie Oakley given to Sitting Bull during the Saint Paul meeting,
dilate upon the wonders of Little sure Shot and go
into a general resume of the incident when Sitting Bull
had adopted a daughter to take the place of one
he had lost. By the time the process of amelioration
(02:54):
was over, the interpreter noticed Sitting Bull was in a
beaming state of amiability. Then it was that the favor
was asked as quickly granted, and an Indian sent happily
on his way. The interpreter decided to try the same methods.
He too stood before the photograph. He too sounded the
praises of what Tanya Cecilia. Having done this, he asked
(03:17):
Sitting Bull how he would like to see his adopted daughter.
The old chieftain changed countenance entirely. That was something very
much desired. Then come with the Wild West Show and
you can see her every day, the interpreter said, Little
sure Shot is with the show. She wants to see
you too. Shortly after that, there sounded throughout the camp
(03:38):
of Sitting Bull, the high pitched yet guttural call of
the camp crier as he went about with important news.
Eno coney eupo Ino cooney eupo. Freely translated, it means
a little of everything, from the demand for attention on
the part of every inhabitant of a Sioux camp, to
the need for hurry for gathering about, from making ready
(04:00):
for travel, or whatever else an Indian desires to interpret
it along such lines. In this instance, it presaged the
giving of great news. Sitting Bull wanted his chieftains for
matters of great moment. A council was to be held,
and at once the ruse of the interpreter had been successful.
Within an hour, with all the solemnity which only an
(04:22):
Indian chieftain can know, the agreement had been made and sealed.
Sitting Bull, with forty of his chieftains, would become a
part of the Buffalo Bill wild West, and all because
of Annie Oakley. A great day that day of arrival
for Sitting Bull. There was his daughter, and there were
the wonders of a wild West exhibition. It was not
(04:43):
long before the old Indian had become a seasoned trooper
in every sense of the word, a good hearted old fellow,
this wily medicine man, to judge from the notes of
Annie Oakley, a bit amazed by the progress of the
white man, and to a certain extent a communist. In
tents of his pockets, say those notes were often emptied
(05:03):
into the hands of small, ragged little boys. Nor could
he understand how so much wealth should go brushing by,
unmindful of the poor, but dazed or not by the
bigness of civilization, the unevenness of wealth, and the general
rush of the white man's world. There was one thing
which sitting Bull did not neglect when he came to
the land of the pale face. That was his cunning
(05:26):
and his ability to fight in the eyes of the
wild West show he was just an engine to the audience.
He might be a strange, fearful creature, to be gawked at,
dilated upon, and hated and feared and wondered about, as
audiences have a habit of doing. But his stardom ceased.
There no hurrying flunkeys attended to his wants, no rushing
(05:48):
canvassman assisted him with his teepee nor cook house waiter
brought his meal. When a beef was butchered and the
squaws had attended to the niceties of cutting up the animal,
Sitting Bull took his apportioned with the rest, hanging up
the strips of meat about his teepee and regarding them
as one would regard sudden wealth. When the show arrived
(06:08):
in the morning, Sitting Bull put up his own tent,
and more than one wandering sights here, expecting that the
conqueror of Custer would be either caged or at least
partitioned off from ordinary gaze, passed him by without a thought.
It was while he was engaged in the work of
setting up his tent one morning in Pittsburgh that a
rather wild eyed individual hove upon the showgrounds and approached
(06:31):
a cowpuncher. Where's that damned old renegade? He asked, Just
who are your referrin at Pardner, asked the cowpuncher, and
continued to pick his teeth. Sitting Bull, show me the
old renegade, came the announcement, in heightened tones. He killed
my brother in that massacre. The lanky cowboy engineered another
difficult maneuver with his toothpick, then lazily moved into a
(06:54):
position into which he could leap to aid in time
of trouble. A few feet away, Sitting Bull, giving no
evidence whatever that he had heard his name mentioned, in
a tone of anger, drove vigorously at his pegs and
fussed about the straightening of his tent, as though this
were all in the world that mattered. The cowpuncher jerked
his head. It's the old boy asself right there, he said,
(07:17):
and the avenger rushed forward. He made a speech to
which sitting Bull paid no attention whatever, contenting himself with
slightly heavier blows of the hammer upon those tent pegs. Then,
with a melodramatic gesture, the stranger swung an arm toward
a holster containing a revolver, and sitting Bull, without even
glancing up, swung his hammer about two feet out of
(07:39):
its former line. The blow struck fair. Another avenger of
the Custer's last fight had, in the Indian fighting language
of the day, bitten the dust, or perhaps it was
the hammer he bit. At any event, when they picked
him up, three teeth were missing, and Sitting Bull was
still hammering tent stakes. The Buffalo Bill Show prospered more
(08:01):
and more now with the aid of good weather and
the steady augmenting of forces such as Annie Oakley and
Sitting Bull, which appealed to the imaginations of the audiences.
For the first time since its beginning. The books of
the organization showed a profit. When the season ended and
Buffalo Bill's Wild West went into winter quarters to prepare
(08:21):
for what was to be an auspicious season, Sitting Bull
went home, back to the Rosebud and his old life,
his braves, and his teepee, content to remain there and
view the show business in retrospect, leaving, however, when he
went his bow and sack of finest arrows, which he
had used more than once in the hunting of deer
and buffalo. With Annie Oakley, Sitting Bull rather ran to gifts.
(08:44):
As far as what Tania Cecilia was concerned as for
little sure Shot, the end of the season meant that
she could attend school again, and this she did, hurrying
to Cincinnati, that she might cram all the learning possible
into the few months granted her. This, it may be remarked,
at twenty five, and after a season as the star
(09:04):
of what now was a tremendous organization. Salisbury and Cody
had not been idle. With every increasing profit, there had
been more additions to the show. The plans for the
next year were elaborate, providing as they did, for lighting
arrangement that would mean night shows, a summer season on
Staten Island, New York, and a winter wind that was
(09:25):
to make history for the organization, an engagement in the
old Madison Square Garden where Annie Oakley would have her
first experience of a stellar visit to New York. One
naturally wonders when Annie Oakle's prowess at shooting is mentioned
what that quality was which caused her to stand out
from the herd and raise what had been a rather
(09:45):
mediocre type of performance to one that could hold thousands
of persons enthralled. The little Missy was not the first
woman who had appeared in public as a rifle expert
by any means. In fact, when she married Frank Butler
and later became a part of the act of Butler
and Oakley, there were at least sixteen women upon the
(10:05):
American stage, all performing tricks of shooting, and all claiming
in the advertisements of their act to be the champion
lady rifle Shot of the World. That was one reason
why Annie Oakley never used the term or even aspired
to the feminine championship, even though she was given the
unofficial honor by popular consent, but professionally she refused the title.
(10:29):
There was no such thing as a champion lady rifle
Shot of the World for the simple reason that no
contest ever was held to determine one more than that
the term had been so misused even by the time
when Annie Oakley made her first public appearance, and misused
by persons who could not even shoot, that Annie Oakley
rebelled against it as being a badge of the faker
(10:51):
and fraud. Miss Oakley's favorite book was one known as
The New Testament. In both private and public life, she
adhered always to its teaching. The statement has been made
that women who did not know how to shoot called
themselves the lady rifle champions of the world. Annie Oakley's
notes are authority for this. In one of her memoirs,
(11:12):
she tells of Winona of the High Trapeze, who ascended
to the rigging at the top of the tent and then,
swinging by her heels, fired a rifle at a bull's
eye whenever her trapeze reached the limit of its swing,
and every time she fired at that metal bull's eye,
there came the clang of steel, indicating that the bullet
had struck dead center. This act interested Annie Oakley as
(11:36):
far as she could see, that was a pretty good stunt,
and one which even she perhaps could not do, so
merely from curiosity in Winona's shooting ability, Little Missy invited
her one day to a contest down on the ground,
where Annie Oakley would have a chance to make a score. Also,
the girl only gasped, Oh goodness, Miss Oakley, She exclaimed,
(11:58):
I couldn't do that. Why, I hardly know one end
of the gun from the other. I just get up
there and pull the trigger. And every time I fire
a blank cartridge, a property man pulls a string and
rings the bell. That's all I know about shooting. In fact,
a great many of the shooting stars who made their
living on the stage at the time of Annie Ooakly's
(12:19):
debut knew little more than Winona. There are perhaps more
avenues for fakery in stage markmanship than in perhaps any
other types of performance. The butlers, for instance, attended with
some excitement the performance of a stage shot whose main
item of interest was his ability to play a piano
with a rifle. Above each key was a tiny white disc, which,
(12:42):
he explained to the audience, was attached to the hammer,
which struck the sounding wire of the piano. Therefore, when
he fired a bullet and struck this little white disc,
the impact threw the hammer against the wire and produced
a note. Before him were a number of repeating rifles
at dizzy speed. He explained, he would fire one rifle
after another, thus playing a tune. He began to shoot.
(13:06):
Sure enough, the keys of the piano went down. Every
time he pulled the trigger. The tune went on. But
suddenly the performer's gun jammed. It so surprised him that
he forgot to pick up another and merely stood there
trying to extricate the offending cartridge. And while he stood impotent,
the piano continued to play on and on and on.
(13:27):
The tune had not been produced by rifle bullets whatever,
but by a system of invisible wires running to the
agile hands of a confederate. Such were a few of
the tricks which existed at that time, and still exists
to day. In many shooting acts. For that matter, the
snuffing out of a candle by a rifle bullet was, then,
as he is now, a much simpler thing than it appears.
(13:50):
All that is necessary is to hit the board against
which the candle invariably stands, and the swish of the
striking bullet will create enough wind to put out the flame.
The flipping of the ashes of a cigar held in
the mouth of a confederate could be accomplished even better
with a blank cartridge than with a bullet. Bullets are dangerous,
(14:10):
whereas with a blank cartridge, all that was necessary was
to jiggle between the teeth a hairpin which ran through
the body of the cigar, and the slight movement dropped
the ashes, without the aid of a missile whatever. For
that reason, said Annie Oakley, whenever I did that trick,
I hit the cigar or the cigarette itself, tearing it
(14:31):
to pieces with the bullet, so that an audience could
be sure that there was no fakery. For fakery was rampant,
no more perhaps than it is to day. But then
there are no antiokleies to day either. The ringing of
a bull's eye bell by a so styled Champion of
the World was done by a reversal of the usual
appearance of a target. Instead of the bull's eye being black,
(14:54):
it was white surrounded by a large black ring which
could not be seen by the audience. That ring was
of steel. Hit any part of an eight inch target
and the bell would ring while the gullible audience applauded. Then, too,
there was the funnel, a large black painted cone of
steel which extended beyond the target. If a bullet struck
(15:15):
within a foot of the desired spot, that funnel could
catch it and pull it in to the mark desired,
and the bell rang again. So it may be seen
that there were some really great shots when Annie Oakley
entered the field. Persons, for instance, who could place a
playing card upon the top of a glass, aim, almost
without sighting, pull the trigger and knock that playing card off.
(15:38):
But the wind did it not. The bullet the passage
of lead within a half a foot would raise the
card and drop it to the floor. Tricks, fakes, and
more tricks than fakes. Yet Annie Oakley not only caused
a new interest in shooting, but elevated herself to the
position of a star in an organization which as time
went on loaded itself heavily with Stellarton. The reason that
(16:01):
she did it was because she performed by design the
things which could not be faked. It is hard to
fake a target that is in the air. Miss Oakley
explained in the notations of her memoirs, And for that reason,
I always endeavored to keep things above ground and away
from anything where a wire or an impact could be
accused of shattering the object instead of the bullet. When
(16:24):
one is shooting an objects in the air, only one
thing can be done to aid marksmanship. That is, to
substitute what is known as mustard seed shot for the
bullet in a rifle cartridge. I used this sort of
shot to a certain extent in my act in hitting
objects which could not possibly be struck with a rifle bullet,
thus making an exceedingly small boer shotgun out of a rifle.
(16:48):
But whenever I did this, I always informed the spectators
of the fact one cannot succeed long when one does
not hold the faith of the audience. It was honesty
which helped to make any Oakley's shooting the wonderful thing
that it was. When the small boy, or the grown
up for that matter, heard the announcer proclaim that Miss
Annie Oakley would now attempt to shoot the cigarette out
(17:10):
of mister Frank Butler's mouth with a single bullet from
a twenty two caliber rifle. That small boy or that
grown up knew it was to be an actual feat
and not a piece of fakery. Faith counts for much
faith and speed. For it was the almost dazzling swiftness
with which Annie Oakley did unfakable and seemingly impossible things
(17:33):
that caused her to be the favorite year upon year. Consider,
for instance, if you ever have attended a day at
the traps, the speed with which a clay pigeon leaves
its trap and sails forth to be missed or shattered,
as the case may be, Consider then the speed which
one must possess to stand twenty feet back of one's gun.
(17:54):
Start with the pulling of the trap, run those twenty feet,
pick up the gun, sight fire, and burst that clay
target while it is still in the air. That was
one of Annie Oakley's feets. Later, she added to the
difficulties by putting two pigeons into the air at once
and a table between her and her gun. She must
jump over the table, raise her gun and knock down
(18:16):
both those targets. The first time she tried it in public,
she fell, shooting from a very undignified sitting position, but
she got her targets. Another event which caused the breath
to move a little faster a generation ago was when
Annie Oakley, in her buckskin costume and trusty rifle, stepped
forth shot at the thin edge of a playing card
(18:38):
held in her husband's hand and sliced it into or
knocked a dime from between his thumb and forefinger at
thirty bases, or hitting a swinging ball as it circled
about his head at the end of a string. Once,
in a contest with a twenty two rifle, she fired
one thousand shots at composition balls thrown into the air.
(18:58):
Out of the thousand, she hit fair nine hundred forty
three times, which still remains a mark for other women
to shoot at, as Will Rogers would say, But it
was with the shotgun that Annie Oakley caused the thrills
to really chase each other along the spectator's spine. And
again was this accomplished by the terrific speed and concentration
(19:19):
under which she was able to work. One of her
stunts was to break six composition balls in four seconds,
another being to break five in five seconds, using a
rifle for the first shot, and finishing up with shotguns,
making a change from one gun to another three times
in the almost impossible space of time. On occasion when
(19:40):
a real thrill was needed, she could cause six composition
balls to be thrown into the air at the same time,
and with two shots apiece from three shotguns, burst every
one of the targets before they struck the ground. One
hundred other tricks like this were Annie Oakley's, all of
them sincere and since the audience knew the fact. The
audience raised her to a point of honor that never
(20:02):
has been equalled by any woman of her type. Annie Oakley,
in the eyes of the show spectator of a quarter
century or more ago, was the typification of a modern Diana.
Newspapers named her that, and spectators gave her their approbation,
and by one of her tricks, Annie Oakley achieved a
form of notoriety which she did not expect. The feat
(20:24):
was to place a playing card the Ace of Hearts,
as a target at a distance of twenty five yards,
then firing twenty five shots in twenty seven seconds, she
would obliterate that ace of hearts in the center, leaving
only bullet holes in its place. A card, thus shot
by Annie Oakley formed quite a souvenir. In the eighties,
(20:45):
there came into being a baseball magnet who looked with
some disfavor upon passes. As all baseball managers look upon
these avenues of free admission. It is the custom that
the door tender may know the ticket to be free,
to punch a hole or two in the card, thus
saving a miscount. When the proceeds of the day were checked.
One day, a card came to the gate which had
(21:07):
been thoroughly perforated. The magnet remarked the comically, humph, looks
like Annie Oakley shot at it. The remark was repeated
and re repeated. Soon along Broadway, a new name came
into being for a free ticket of admission. It was
Annie Oakley, and passes remain Annie Oakley's to this date.
(21:28):
The surprising thing being that Annie Oakley herself denied, ever
having had one of the things I always pay my
way she avered. Perhaps the greatest feat which Annie Oakley
ever performed, however, was accomplished the winner before she joined
the aggregation headed by Buffalo Bill and was one which
by necessity could not be repeated as a part of
(21:50):
a regulation performance that was to fire five thousand rounds,
doing the loading herself, all in a day. Composition balls
were used, and the place of exhibition was Cincinnati. The
effort began in the morning and lasted for nine hours.
On the first thousand, Annie Oakley missed some twenty times.
On the second thousand, she missed only sixteen of the
(22:13):
composition balls, which flew straight from hard springed traps. Then tiring,
her misses became heavier. But when the nine grueling hours
were done, she had established a record, which, as far
as this writer is able to learn, still stands, that
of hitting fair on four thousand, seven hundred seventy two
flying targets out of a possible five thousand. Shooting like
(22:36):
this may give some idea of the number of times
which Annie Oakley pulled the trigger during her eventful lifetime
of rifle and shotgun work. It has been estimated that
she fired altogether not less than two million shots. In
cold figures. That does not sound like a terrific amount,
but in the hands of a statistician it becomes more formidable.
(22:58):
One learns that two men million shots would mean a
shot every minute, night and day, week after week, and
month after month, for a space of time extending to
a continuous total of almost three years. Annie Oakley shot,
granting her beginning in this direction at eight for forty
eight years. A third of that time, according to the
(23:20):
usual order of things, was spent in sleep. That leaves
thirty nine. Pursuing the statistician farther, one finds now that
the reduction has become complete. One thirteenth of Annie Oakley's
waking life was spent in pulling the trigger end of
chapter seven.
Chapter seven of Annie Oakley, Woman at Arms by Courtney
Riley Cooper. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
Read by Barry Eads, Chapter seven. The idea of capitalizing
the Battle of the Little Bighorn, more familiarly known as
the Custer Massacre through the presence of Sitting Bull had
(00:22):
existed for some time with Cody and Salisbury, but the
question of his coming had always been answered with a
decided negative on the part of the old warrior. Sitting
Bull had no desire to be a member of the
Wild West Company. He felt that the white people looked
upon him as an enemy, and for that matter, Tatanka Uataka,
(00:43):
which was his true Sioux name, had no especial reason
for looking upon the pale face with any heightened degree
of affection. Therefore, whenever the question had been broached by
an agent or emissary, Sitting Bull had refused and allowed
that as far as he was concerned, to end the matter. However,
Cody and Salisbury were insistent, and at last, in the
(01:05):
summer of eighteen eighty five sent another emissary to him
with instructions to argue until the medicine man had changed
his mind. This was not an easy task. For three days,
the conversation was entirely one sided. The agent had been
selected with care. It was Sitting Bull's interpreter who had
served on the trip east, when the warrior had met
(01:27):
and adopted Annie Oakley as Little sure Shot, and given
her as a momento of his affections the moccasins worn
by him during the Battle of the Little Big Horn.
These moccasins had been made by the daughter who had died,
and Indian fashion, Sitting Bull could think of no more
fitting present. As has been mentioned, the conversation for three
(01:49):
days had been one sided. The interpreter told of the
Great Bahaska. It was Colonel Cody's Soux name meaning the
long haired man, and the esteem in which the Indians
held Buffalo Bill as a great warrior and a good friend.
He had dilated upon the wonderful experience of traveling about
the country with a Wild West company, the sights to
(02:10):
be seen, the money to be gained, to all of
which oratory Sitting Bull gave a thorough answer. He said, no.
The matter came to a point of despair. Then the
interpreter noticed that whenever a brave of Sitting Bull's command
desired something, he got it. The open sesame seemed to
be to enter Sitting Bull's tent, converse about various topics,
(02:33):
and then taking a position before the cabinet photograph of
Annie Oakley given to Sitting Bull during the Saint Paul meeting,
dilate upon the wonders of Little sure Shot and go
into a general resume of the incident when Sitting Bull
had adopted a daughter to take the place of one
he had lost. By the time the process of amelioration
(02:54):
was over, the interpreter noticed Sitting Bull was in a
beaming state of amiability. Then it was that the favor
was asked as quickly granted, and an Indian sent happily
on his way. The interpreter decided to try the same methods.
He too stood before the photograph. He too sounded the
praises of what Tanya Cecilia. Having done this, he asked
(03:17):
Sitting Bull how he would like to see his adopted daughter.
The old chieftain changed countenance entirely. That was something very
much desired. Then come with the Wild West Show and
you can see her every day, the interpreter said, Little
sure Shot is with the show. She wants to see
you too. Shortly after that, there sounded throughout the camp
(03:38):
of Sitting Bull, the high pitched yet guttural call of
the camp crier as he went about with important news.
Eno coney eupo Ino cooney eupo. Freely translated, it means
a little of everything, from the demand for attention on
the part of every inhabitant of a Sioux camp, to
the need for hurry for gathering about, from making ready
(04:00):
for travel, or whatever else an Indian desires to interpret
it along such lines. In this instance, it presaged the
giving of great news. Sitting Bull wanted his chieftains for
matters of great moment. A council was to be held,
and at once the ruse of the interpreter had been successful.
Within an hour, with all the solemnity which only an
(04:22):
Indian chieftain can know, the agreement had been made and sealed.
Sitting Bull, with forty of his chieftains, would become a
part of the Buffalo Bill wild West, and all because
of Annie Oakley. A great day that day of arrival
for Sitting Bull. There was his daughter, and there were
the wonders of a wild West exhibition. It was not
(04:43):
long before the old Indian had become a seasoned trooper
in every sense of the word, a good hearted old fellow,
this wily medicine man, to judge from the notes of
Annie Oakley, a bit amazed by the progress of the
white man, and to a certain extent a communist. In
tents of his pockets, say those notes were often emptied
(05:03):
into the hands of small, ragged little boys. Nor could
he understand how so much wealth should go brushing by,
unmindful of the poor, but dazed or not by the
bigness of civilization, the unevenness of wealth, and the general
rush of the white man's world. There was one thing
which sitting Bull did not neglect when he came to
the land of the pale face. That was his cunning
(05:26):
and his ability to fight in the eyes of the
wild West show he was just an engine to the audience.
He might be a strange, fearful creature, to be gawked at,
dilated upon, and hated and feared and wondered about, as
audiences have a habit of doing. But his stardom ceased.
There no hurrying flunkeys attended to his wants, no rushing
(05:48):
canvassman assisted him with his teepee nor cook house waiter
brought his meal. When a beef was butchered and the
squaws had attended to the niceties of cutting up the animal,
Sitting Bull took his apportioned with the rest, hanging up
the strips of meat about his teepee and regarding them
as one would regard sudden wealth. When the show arrived
(06:08):
in the morning, Sitting Bull put up his own tent,
and more than one wandering sights here, expecting that the
conqueror of Custer would be either caged or at least
partitioned off from ordinary gaze, passed him by without a thought.
It was while he was engaged in the work of
setting up his tent one morning in Pittsburgh that a
rather wild eyed individual hove upon the showgrounds and approached
(06:31):
a cowpuncher. Where's that damned old renegade? He asked, Just
who are your referrin at Pardner, asked the cowpuncher, and
continued to pick his teeth. Sitting Bull, show me the
old renegade, came the announcement, in heightened tones. He killed
my brother in that massacre. The lanky cowboy engineered another
difficult maneuver with his toothpick, then lazily moved into a
(06:54):
position into which he could leap to aid in time
of trouble. A few feet away, Sitting Bull, giving no
evidence whatever that he had heard his name mentioned, in
a tone of anger, drove vigorously at his pegs and
fussed about the straightening of his tent, as though this
were all in the world that mattered. The cowpuncher jerked
his head. It's the old boy asself right there, he said,
(07:17):
and the avenger rushed forward. He made a speech to
which sitting Bull paid no attention whatever, contenting himself with
slightly heavier blows of the hammer upon those tent pegs. Then,
with a melodramatic gesture, the stranger swung an arm toward
a holster containing a revolver, and sitting Bull, without even
glancing up, swung his hammer about two feet out of
(07:39):
its former line. The blow struck fair. Another avenger of
the Custer's last fight had, in the Indian fighting language
of the day, bitten the dust, or perhaps it was
the hammer he bit. At any event, when they picked
him up, three teeth were missing, and Sitting Bull was
still hammering tent stakes. The Buffalo Bill Show prospered more
(08:01):
and more now with the aid of good weather and
the steady augmenting of forces such as Annie Oakley and
Sitting Bull, which appealed to the imaginations of the audiences.
For the first time since its beginning. The books of
the organization showed a profit. When the season ended and
Buffalo Bill's Wild West went into winter quarters to prepare
(08:21):
for what was to be an auspicious season, Sitting Bull
went home, back to the Rosebud and his old life,
his braves, and his teepee, content to remain there and
view the show business in retrospect, leaving, however, when he
went his bow and sack of finest arrows, which he
had used more than once in the hunting of deer
and buffalo. With Annie Oakley, Sitting Bull rather ran to gifts.
(08:44):
As far as what Tania Cecilia was concerned as for
little sure Shot, the end of the season meant that
she could attend school again, and this she did, hurrying
to Cincinnati, that she might cram all the learning possible
into the few months granted her. This, it may be remarked,
at twenty five, and after a season as the star
(09:04):
of what now was a tremendous organization. Salisbury and Cody
had not been idle. With every increasing profit, there had
been more additions to the show. The plans for the
next year were elaborate, providing as they did, for lighting
arrangement that would mean night shows, a summer season on
Staten Island, New York, and a winter wind that was
(09:25):
to make history for the organization, an engagement in the
old Madison Square Garden where Annie Oakley would have her
first experience of a stellar visit to New York. One
naturally wonders when Annie Oakle's prowess at shooting is mentioned
what that quality was which caused her to stand out
from the herd and raise what had been a rather
(09:45):
mediocre type of performance to one that could hold thousands
of persons enthralled. The little Missy was not the first
woman who had appeared in public as a rifle expert
by any means. In fact, when she married Frank Butler
and later became a part of the act of Butler
and Oakley, there were at least sixteen women upon the
(10:05):
American stage, all performing tricks of shooting, and all claiming
in the advertisements of their act to be the champion
lady rifle Shot of the World. That was one reason
why Annie Oakley never used the term or even aspired
to the feminine championship, even though she was given the
unofficial honor by popular consent, but professionally she refused the title.
(10:29):
There was no such thing as a champion lady rifle
Shot of the World for the simple reason that no
contest ever was held to determine one more than that
the term had been so misused even by the time
when Annie Oakley made her first public appearance, and misused
by persons who could not even shoot, that Annie Oakley
rebelled against it as being a badge of the faker
(10:51):
and fraud. Miss Oakley's favorite book was one known as
The New Testament. In both private and public life, she
adhered always to its teaching. The statement has been made
that women who did not know how to shoot called
themselves the lady rifle champions of the world. Annie Oakley's
notes are authority for this. In one of her memoirs,
(11:12):
she tells of Winona of the High Trapeze, who ascended
to the rigging at the top of the tent and then,
swinging by her heels, fired a rifle at a bull's
eye whenever her trapeze reached the limit of its swing,
and every time she fired at that metal bull's eye,
there came the clang of steel, indicating that the bullet
had struck dead center. This act interested Annie Oakley as
(11:36):
far as she could see, that was a pretty good stunt,
and one which even she perhaps could not do, so
merely from curiosity in Winona's shooting ability, Little Missy invited
her one day to a contest down on the ground,
where Annie Oakley would have a chance to make a score. Also,
the girl only gasped, Oh goodness, Miss Oakley, She exclaimed,
(11:58):
I couldn't do that. Why, I hardly know one end
of the gun from the other. I just get up
there and pull the trigger. And every time I fire
a blank cartridge, a property man pulls a string and
rings the bell. That's all I know about shooting. In fact,
a great many of the shooting stars who made their
living on the stage at the time of Annie Ooakly's
(12:19):
debut knew little more than Winona. There are perhaps more
avenues for fakery in stage markmanship than in perhaps any
other types of performance. The butlers, for instance, attended with
some excitement the performance of a stage shot whose main
item of interest was his ability to play a piano
with a rifle. Above each key was a tiny white disc, which,
(12:42):
he explained to the audience, was attached to the hammer,
which struck the sounding wire of the piano. Therefore, when
he fired a bullet and struck this little white disc,
the impact threw the hammer against the wire and produced
a note. Before him were a number of repeating rifles
at dizzy speed. He explained, he would fire one rifle
after another, thus playing a tune. He began to shoot.
(13:06):
Sure enough, the keys of the piano went down. Every
time he pulled the trigger. The tune went on. But
suddenly the performer's gun jammed. It so surprised him that
he forgot to pick up another and merely stood there
trying to extricate the offending cartridge. And while he stood impotent,
the piano continued to play on and on and on.
(13:27):
The tune had not been produced by rifle bullets whatever,
but by a system of invisible wires running to the
agile hands of a confederate. Such were a few of
the tricks which existed at that time, and still exists
to day. In many shooting acts. For that matter, the
snuffing out of a candle by a rifle bullet was, then,
as he is now, a much simpler thing than it appears.
(13:50):
All that is necessary is to hit the board against
which the candle invariably stands, and the swish of the
striking bullet will create enough wind to put out the flame.
The flipping of the ashes of a cigar held in
the mouth of a confederate could be accomplished even better
with a blank cartridge than with a bullet. Bullets are dangerous,
(14:10):
whereas with a blank cartridge, all that was necessary was
to jiggle between the teeth a hairpin which ran through
the body of the cigar, and the slight movement dropped
the ashes, without the aid of a missile whatever. For
that reason, said Annie Oakley, whenever I did that trick,
I hit the cigar or the cigarette itself, tearing it
(14:31):
to pieces with the bullet, so that an audience could
be sure that there was no fakery. For fakery was rampant,
no more perhaps than it is to day. But then
there are no antiokleies to day either. The ringing of
a bull's eye bell by a so styled Champion of
the World was done by a reversal of the usual
appearance of a target. Instead of the bull's eye being black,
(14:54):
it was white surrounded by a large black ring which
could not be seen by the audience. That ring was
of steel. Hit any part of an eight inch target
and the bell would ring while the gullible audience applauded. Then, too,
there was the funnel, a large black painted cone of
steel which extended beyond the target. If a bullet struck
(15:15):
within a foot of the desired spot, that funnel could
catch it and pull it in to the mark desired,
and the bell rang again. So it may be seen
that there were some really great shots when Annie Oakley
entered the field. Persons, for instance, who could place a
playing card upon the top of a glass, aim, almost
without sighting, pull the trigger and knock that playing card off.
(15:38):
But the wind did it not. The bullet the passage
of lead within a half a foot would raise the
card and drop it to the floor. Tricks, fakes, and
more tricks than fakes. Yet Annie Oakley not only caused
a new interest in shooting, but elevated herself to the
position of a star in an organization which as time
went on loaded itself heavily with Stellarton. The reason that
(16:01):
she did it was because she performed by design the
things which could not be faked. It is hard to
fake a target that is in the air. Miss Oakley
explained in the notations of her memoirs, And for that reason,
I always endeavored to keep things above ground and away
from anything where a wire or an impact could be
accused of shattering the object instead of the bullet. When
(16:24):
one is shooting an objects in the air, only one
thing can be done to aid marksmanship. That is, to
substitute what is known as mustard seed shot for the
bullet in a rifle cartridge. I used this sort of
shot to a certain extent in my act in hitting
objects which could not possibly be struck with a rifle bullet,
thus making an exceedingly small boer shotgun out of a rifle.
(16:48):
But whenever I did this, I always informed the spectators
of the fact one cannot succeed long when one does
not hold the faith of the audience. It was honesty
which helped to make any Oakley's shooting the wonderful thing
that it was. When the small boy, or the grown
up for that matter, heard the announcer proclaim that Miss
Annie Oakley would now attempt to shoot the cigarette out
(17:10):
of mister Frank Butler's mouth with a single bullet from
a twenty two caliber rifle. That small boy or that
grown up knew it was to be an actual feat
and not a piece of fakery. Faith counts for much
faith and speed. For it was the almost dazzling swiftness
with which Annie Oakley did unfakable and seemingly impossible things
(17:33):
that caused her to be the favorite year upon year. Consider,
for instance, if you ever have attended a day at
the traps, the speed with which a clay pigeon leaves
its trap and sails forth to be missed or shattered,
as the case may be, Consider then the speed which
one must possess to stand twenty feet back of one's gun.
(17:54):
Start with the pulling of the trap, run those twenty feet,
pick up the gun, sight fire, and burst that clay
target while it is still in the air. That was
one of Annie Oakley's feets. Later, she added to the
difficulties by putting two pigeons into the air at once
and a table between her and her gun. She must
jump over the table, raise her gun and knock down
(18:16):
both those targets. The first time she tried it in public,
she fell, shooting from a very undignified sitting position, but
she got her targets. Another event which caused the breath
to move a little faster a generation ago was when
Annie Oakley, in her buckskin costume and trusty rifle, stepped
forth shot at the thin edge of a playing card
(18:38):
held in her husband's hand and sliced it into or
knocked a dime from between his thumb and forefinger at
thirty bases, or hitting a swinging ball as it circled
about his head at the end of a string. Once,
in a contest with a twenty two rifle, she fired
one thousand shots at composition balls thrown into the air.
(18:58):
Out of the thousand, she hit fair nine hundred forty
three times, which still remains a mark for other women
to shoot at, as Will Rogers would say, But it
was with the shotgun that Annie Oakley caused the thrills
to really chase each other along the spectator's spine. And
again was this accomplished by the terrific speed and concentration
(19:19):
under which she was able to work. One of her
stunts was to break six composition balls in four seconds,
another being to break five in five seconds, using a
rifle for the first shot, and finishing up with shotguns,
making a change from one gun to another three times
in the almost impossible space of time. On occasion when
(19:40):
a real thrill was needed, she could cause six composition
balls to be thrown into the air at the same time,
and with two shots apiece from three shotguns, burst every
one of the targets before they struck the ground. One
hundred other tricks like this were Annie Oakley's, all of
them sincere and since the audience knew the fact. The
audience raised her to a point of honor that never
(20:02):
has been equalled by any woman of her type. Annie Oakley,
in the eyes of the show spectator of a quarter
century or more ago, was the typification of a modern Diana.
Newspapers named her that, and spectators gave her their approbation,
and by one of her tricks, Annie Oakley achieved a
form of notoriety which she did not expect. The feat
(20:24):
was to place a playing card the Ace of Hearts,
as a target at a distance of twenty five yards,
then firing twenty five shots in twenty seven seconds, she
would obliterate that ace of hearts in the center, leaving
only bullet holes in its place. A card, thus shot
by Annie Oakley formed quite a souvenir. In the eighties,
(20:45):
there came into being a baseball magnet who looked with
some disfavor upon passes. As all baseball managers look upon
these avenues of free admission. It is the custom that
the door tender may know the ticket to be free,
to punch a hole or two in the card, thus
saving a miscount. When the proceeds of the day were checked.
One day, a card came to the gate which had
(21:07):
been thoroughly perforated. The magnet remarked the comically, humph, looks
like Annie Oakley shot at it. The remark was repeated
and re repeated. Soon along Broadway, a new name came
into being for a free ticket of admission. It was
Annie Oakley, and passes remain Annie Oakley's to this date.
(21:28):
The surprising thing being that Annie Oakley herself denied, ever
having had one of the things I always pay my
way she avered. Perhaps the greatest feat which Annie Oakley
ever performed, however, was accomplished the winner before she joined
the aggregation headed by Buffalo Bill and was one which
by necessity could not be repeated as a part of
(21:50):
a regulation performance that was to fire five thousand rounds,
doing the loading herself, all in a day. Composition balls
were used, and the place of exhibition was Cincinnati. The
effort began in the morning and lasted for nine hours.
On the first thousand, Annie Oakley missed some twenty times.
On the second thousand, she missed only sixteen of the
(22:13):
composition balls, which flew straight from hard springed traps. Then tiring,
her misses became heavier. But when the nine grueling hours
were done, she had established a record, which, as far
as this writer is able to learn, still stands, that
of hitting fair on four thousand, seven hundred seventy two
flying targets out of a possible five thousand. Shooting like
(22:36):
this may give some idea of the number of times
which Annie Oakley pulled the trigger during her eventful lifetime
of rifle and shotgun work. It has been estimated that
she fired altogether not less than two million shots. In
cold figures. That does not sound like a terrific amount,
but in the hands of a statistician it becomes more formidable.
(22:58):
One learns that two men million shots would mean a
shot every minute, night and day, week after week, and
month after month, for a space of time extending to
a continuous total of almost three years. Annie Oakley shot,
granting her beginning in this direction at eight for forty
eight years. A third of that time, according to the
(23:20):
usual order of things, was spent in sleep. That leaves
thirty nine. Pursuing the statistician farther, one finds now that
the reduction has become complete. One thirteenth of Annie Oakley's
waking life was spent in pulling the trigger end of
chapter seven.
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