Cody started the ball rolling the very next day. He wrote Louisa: ‘We have had a fight. I killed Yellow Hand, a Cheyenne chief, in a single-handed fight. [I am going to] send the war bonnet, shield, bride [bridle], whip, arms and his scalp….I have only one scalp I can call my own: that fellow I fought single-handed in sight of our command, and the cheers that went up when he fell was deafening.’

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Unfortunately, Cody’s parcel reached his wife before his letter. Thinking her husband had sent some fine new gift, she eagerly reached inside. Upon pulling out the rancid scalp, poor Louisa fainted dead away. She later made Cody promise he would never again scalp another Indian. Yellow Hair’s accoutrements, including his missing topknot, can be still be seen today in the Buffalo Bill Museum at Cody, Wyo.

Cody’s famous fight was, of course, single-handed only in a loose sense; he did have some small help from the 5th Cavalry. Still, a man can be forgiven for bragging to his own wife. However, since everything he did or said was grist for the popular press, the legend overtook the truth in short order. Within a few months, Cody was treading the boards once more in a stage production titled The Red Right Hand; or Buffalo Bill’s First Scalp for Custer. The show was a success almost everywhere Cody took it.

Over the years, the story just kept getting better and better. The fight became not only single-handed but also hand-to-hand, a titanic hour-long, no-holds-barred, death struggle fought with knife and tomahawk against a Cheyenne chief backed by no less than 29,000 followers.

The names Cody and Custer became closely associated in the minds of the public, mainly because of several popular dime novels. In Buffalo Bill with General Custer, a typically fanciful work by Prentiss Ingraham, the brave scout Cody was made out to be the only white survivor of Custer’s Last Stand. In the same mold was Buffalo Bill’s Grip; or, Oath-bound to Custer. Cody does not participate in the battle, but he does arrive before Custer’s body is cold. After being captured by the Sioux and then rescued by a Pocahontas-like lndian maiden, Cody gets his revenge–against Yellow Hand in a one-on-one knife fight.

Cody himself came to prefer showcasing Custer’s Last Stand rather than his own ‘First Scalp.’ When he began his Wild West show in 1883, Cody championed Custer repeatedly. The Last Stand became the climax of each show. An actor named Buck Taylor played Custer, and in every performance, the circle of cavalrymen would grow smaller and smaller. Then, after Taylor and his fellow actors had bit the dust, Buffalo Bill would appear, remove his showy hat and bow his head mournfully. The words ‘Too Late’ would be projected on a screen–a fitting end to the show. As late as 1904 there were posters out that depicted Custer’s final moments and said ‘Custer’s Last Stand as presented by Buffalo Bill’s Wild West.’ Not that Cody ever completely grew silent about his own heroism at Warbonnet Creek. He was not that kind of guy.

After a couple of decades, the story had reached such outlandish proportions that skeptics were already beginning to insist the whole thing was pure moonshine, and that Cody had never seen an Indian wilder than the cigar-store variety. Still, the U.S. government considered the Warbonnet fight important. It was just about the only victory American soldiers were going to get in that dreary centennial year of 1876, so the most had to be made of it. Washington officials cheered the skirmish as though it had been a second Gettysburg. Thus, in the end, the legend of Buffalo Bill and the Indian served just about everyone well.

In 1930, Congress invited an aged Chris Madsen, then a retired law officer of considerable fame himself, to help relocate the spot where the Warbonnet battle took place. Madsen, his memory undimmed by the passage of 54 years, did so without difficulty. In 1934, no less than two monuments were dedicated there, a place still pretty much smack in the middle of nowhere. One stone obelisk commemorates the heroism of the 5th Cavalry; the other marks the spot where Buffalo Bill killed his Indian.

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