[1] At age fourteen, Crawford emigrated to the United States from Ireland, joining other members of his family who had preceded him to Minersville, Pennsylvania, the heart of the nation's anthracite coal region.

On July 24, 1876, Jack boarded a train for Cheyenne en route to Ft. Laramie and friends presented him with appropriate gifts: a new Winchester repeating rifle, cartridge belt, holster, hunting knife and sheath and a buckskin suit.

"The management of the Omaha Daily Bee contributed 'liberally to his outfit' and paid tribute to its intrepid correspondent with these words: Captain Jack is a right good fellow, and we hope to see him distinguish himself alongside of his old friend Buffalo Bill.

Crawford played a significant role in the Battle of Slim Buttes (1876) and made a daring ride of more than three hundred miles in six days to carry dispatches of the victory to Fort Laramie for the New York Herald.

In wiring of this incident in his autobiography, published in 1879, Cody whimsically remarked: "Jack Crawford is the only man I have ever known that could have brought that bottle of whiskey through without "accident befalling it, for he is one of the very few teetotal scouts I ever met.

[8] "Although Captain Jack's "yarns and rhymes" would help to relieve the monotony of camp life, Buffalo Bill grew bored by the inactivity and left the expedition to continue his theatrical career in the East.

On September 7, 1876, General Crook ordered Captain Anson Mills to take 150 troopers, riding upon the command's best horses, to the northernmost mining camps in the Black Hills to obtain food and supplies for his starving troops and hurry back.

[22] The village lay compactly in a broad depression of ravines encircled by the spires of Slim Buttes, limestone and clay summits capped with pine trees near present-day Reva, South Dakota.

[26] Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka would lead twenty-five mounted soldiers in a cavalry charge through the clustered lodges and stampede the Indians and their pony herd, all hands yelling and firing with revolvers to add to the confusion.

Strahorn recalled, As usual, I could not be denied the thrill of the charge of the by the gallant twenty-five, and I'm sure that everything worked out as planned, except that many of the Indians escaped into a thicket in the bottom of a narrow gulch running along within a few yards of the nearest tepee, while a few others got away into the hills.

[37] Most of the Indians fled splashing through the swollen creek and scrabbling into the heavy underbrush south of the stream bed and up the adjacent bluffs, taking advantage of Mill's failure to secure an effective cordon southwest of the tipis.

[39] The picture we quickly presented in our movements around the battle field with the skirmishing still in progress, rifles in one hand and ravenously chewing at a great hunk of dried meat in the other, provoked much fun, and, with blessed momentary sunshine, a general forgetfulness of past troubles.Chief American Horse's camp was a rich prize.

"[40] In a dispatch written for the Omaha Daily Bee, Crawford described the cornucopia he encountered: "Tepees full of dried meats, skins, bead work, and all that an Indian's head could wish for.

[42] Of significance, troopers recovered items from the Battle of Little Bighorn, including a 7th Cavalry Regiment guidon from Company I, fastened to the lodge of Chief American Horse and the bloody gauntlets of slain Captain Myles Keogh.

Not anticipating an Indian fight, Mills had allowed his men only fifty rounds of ammunition each, and he would wait for General Crook's personal attention to Chief American Horse.

[68] Crook, exasperated by the protracted defense of the hidden Sioux, and annoyed at the casualties inflicted among his men, formed a perfect cordon of infantry and dismounted cavalry around the Indian den.

General Crook ordered the men to suspend operations immediately, but dozens of angry soldiers heard this evidence that the Lakota had put women and children at risk.They surged forward and had to be beat back by officers.

Such matchless bravery electrified even our enraged soldiers into a spirit of chivalry, and General Crook, recognizing the fact that the unfortunate savages had fought like fiends, in defense of wives and children, ordered another suspension of hostilities and called upon the dusky heroes to surrender.

The yelling of Indians, discharge of guns, cursing of soldiers, crying of children, barking of dogs, the dead crowded in the bottom of the gory, slimy ditch, and the shrieks of the wounded, presented the most agonizing scene that clings in my memory of Sioux warfare.

"After a few minutes deliberation, the chief, American Horse, a fine looking, broad-chested Sioux, with a handsome face and a neck like a bull, showed himself at the mouth of the cave, presenting the butt end of his rifle toward the General.

The chieftain's intestines protruded from his wound, but a squaw, his wife perhaps, tied her shawl around the injured part, and then the poor, fearless savage, never uttering a complaint, walked slowly to a little camp fire, occupied by his people about 20 yards away, and sat down among the women and children.

[82] The surgeons worked futilely to close his stomach wound, and Chief American Horse refused morphine preferring to clench a stick between his teeth to hide any sign of pain or emotions and thus he bravely and stolidly died.

While, the adventure cost Captain Jack his job as a military scout, his daring ride to tell the news of the great victory at Slim Buttes made him a national celebrity.

[100] Cody's fight with the young Cheyenne warrior Yellow Hand and "First Scalp for Custer" launched his theatrical career with a force never before experienced in the relationship between the press and the fledgling world of show business.

The yelling of Indians, discharge of guns, cursing of soldiers, crying of children, barking of dogs, the dead crowded in the bottom of the gory, slimy ditch, and the shrieks of the wounded, presented the most agonizing scene that clings in my memory of Sioux warfare.

In a horseback combat scene staged with Buffalo Bill, Captain Jack initially reported he accidentally shot himself in the groin during a performance, but later blamed Cody's drunken condition for the incident.

Jack crisscrossed the nation speaking to Chautauquas, veteran's organizations, schoolchildren, college students, reformatory inmates, private clubs, railroad employees, schoolteachers, YMCA boys, and middle-class Americans in general.

Captain Jack's performances were a "frontier monologue and medley" that, as one New York City journalist reported, "held his audience spell-bound for two hours by a simple narration of his life."

He blamed their influence for some of the tragedies he had witnessed during the Black Hills gold rush; youngsters lured west by adventure stories only to die from exposure or in brushes with the Sioux.

Their hunting ground, which the government had sworn by treaty to respect, was overthrown with white hunters, settlers, trappers, gold-seekers and the riff-raff of the plains, who killed off the game without regard to its use or the consequence of such a slaughter to the Indians.