The “Thrilling and Romantic Story” of Frederick T. Cummins, “Great White Indian Chief”

Schenectady, New York: privately published, 1912. Single twenty-four page booklet measuring 6 ¼ x 9 ¼ inches. Cover and some pages torn at fold; some marginal damage to covers and slight wrinkling and toning to some pages; overall excellent.. A booklet telling the life story of “Colonel” Fred Cummins (1859–1932), especially his time growing up in the Council Bluffs area among the Omaha, Pawnee, Winnebago, and Sioux people, and his supposed ceremonial adoption later in life by Oglala Lakota Chief Red Cloud. Cummins, the son of a trapper, went on to head a Wild West exhibition called “Young Buffalo Wild West and Colonel Cummins’ Far East”, which mainly showcased Indigenous American chiefs—the booklet calls Cummins the ‘only man with whom the Government intrusted all the famous Indian Chiefs, including Chief Geronimo and his band of Apaches”. The photographs in the booklet mainly show various chiefs, including Red Cloud, Joseph, American Horse, and others; many of these were taken at Cummins’ “Indian Congress” at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. There is also a photograph of Calamity Jane, who participated in the Exposition as well.

We find twenty-nine copies of the booklet in OCLC. Of interest to historians of wild west mythologizing. (Inventory #: List2999)