William Frank Carver
[1][2] For most of his adult life Carver gave the year of his birth as 1840, but it is likely he did so in order to enlarge the time frame needed to create stories of frontier experience for his admiring audiences after he became a showman.
In November 1872 he moved to the newly organized Frontier County, Nebraska, in the company of Ena Raymonde, a southern belle from Georgia, whose brother W. H. "Paddy" Miles had recently established a trapper's camp known as Wolf's Rest on Medicine Creek.
Carver took a claim near Wolf's Rest, and it was here that he began to acquire the target shooting, horseback riding, and hunting skills that would lead to his later success as a world-class marksman.
An entry from Raymonde's 1872 journal reveals insights into Carver as a young man and also portrays the prevailing enthusiasm for shooting sports in the 19th century: "Sunday afternoon we all…went to see a prairie-dog town!
Shot about 200 rounds; the Dr. doing the most of the business of shooting if not killing..."[2][5][6][7][8][9][10] Although Carver's time as a plainsman was short, he was on the western Nebraska frontier during an exciting era.
A remnant band of Lakota Sioux known as the Cut-off Sioux was encamped on Medicine Creek several miles to the east of Carver's cabin, and although his claim of having killed the Cut-offs' old war chief Whistler and two of his braves in late 1872 does not conform to the evidence, Carver was certainly in the area during a time of potential and sometimes real hostilities between whites and Native Americans.
[11] Late in 1874 Carver spent two weeks practicing dentistry at Fort Sidney, after which he moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming, where he continued working as a dentist.
At about this time he coined the moniker "Evil Spirit," accompanied by a "camp-fire tale" that the name had been given to him by Spotted Tail, the famous chief of the Brulé Lakota, because Carver had felled a rare white buffalo.
The gold badge was capped with the image of a grizzly bear and bore an inscription that proclaimed Dr. W. F. Carver the "Champion Rifle Shot of the World."
Being fresh from the broad plains of the untrammeled West, he has that delightful air of unconventionality to be found only in the land of the setting sun... Dr.
The balls were of the thinnest film of glass, slightly tinted, so as to be seen easily in the air, and when they broke, the feathers scattered in every direction...[12]Carver also joined the ranks of western figures that embellished their frontier credentials by writing books.
F. Carver of California: Champion Rifle Shot of the World, which contains entirely fictional versions of his early life but also includes extracts from the press coverage of his first shooting tour across the country.
Almost from the beginning of his shooting career, Carver issued challenges to Captain Adam Henry Bogardus, who was recognized across the country and around the world as the champion trap shooter.
In 1879 Carver set sail for a tour of Europe, where he shot in numerous exhibitions and matches, using shotgun, rifle, and pistol and shooting from horseback or from foot.
He traveled to France, Belgium, Germany, and Austria, but most of the tour was in the British Isles, where he was booked for a long-term engagement at the Crystal Palace, in the wealthy Sydenham Hill district of London.
Cody then formed a partnership with the promoter and showman Nate Salsbury, and the show continued as Buffalo Bill's Wild West.
Cody failed to appear, however, so Carver agreed to dismiss his suit for $10,000 cash and Salsbury's offer to pay the court costs.
Carver's claim to exclusive use of the available electric lights left Cody's show in the dark and added further hostility to the fierce competition between the two showmen.
In conjunction with the outdoor exhibition, Carver had added a dramatic play, and on his return to the United States in early 1892 launched a tour of both productions across the country.
Noting that Carver refused to tell his age but looked fifteen years younger than his stated age, the State Journal reported that "Dr. W. F. Carver, the champion shot of the world, has been giving exhibitions of his wonderful skill in rifle, shotgun and horseback shooting this week at Lincoln park that mystified, surprised and astonished the audience present.
[4] Carver told several versions of a story describing an exciting escape from bandits, which inspired the diving horse act, but those who remembered him in Nebraska said he got the idea after plunging on horseback off a bank into a deep hole in Medicine Creek.
Included in the touring company were his son, Al, who helped train and take care of the horses, and his daughter, Lorena, said to be the first rider.
By the time his future daughter-in-law, Sonora Webster, joined the show in 1924, Carver had two diving teams on the road, each performing in a different city.
A short time later he signed a contract for a season's engagement at Atlantic City's Steel Pier, and the diving horse act became a permanent fixture there for several years.
Sonora Webster Carver lost her eyesight in 1931 when her horse "Red Lips" dove into the tank off-balance, causing her to hit the water face first.
Her early career inspired the 1991 Disney movie Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken, starring Gabrielle Anwar and based on Carver's memoir, A Girl and Five Brave Horses.
