The Orphan of Fortune Part II

Part II of Banjo Dick...******* [Ira Brown, alias "Banjo Dick," grew up in the hard scrabble alleys of California mining towns, where he learned to survive by his wits. To live and prosper there, one had to be watchful and somewhat predatory, and learn to use every opportunity to his advantage. He had to be a scavenger, a trader, and above all a big bluffer, and when he finally mastered the game, a gambler. After years of hustling, performing and playing his banjo on stage was like child's play. He could perform in the evenings and then gamble all night. Brown never fully revealed this part of his background to the eager newspaperman. He had told about sleeping on his own gambling table at nights instead of a bed, but not much about his prowess on them in the daytime. And he avoided mention of his other major skill... as a con-man. He admitted selling lots for too much in Deadwood, but did not mention his earlier venture in a similar scheme at the now forgotten "Skatgitt" gold rush in Washington, where he marked off his own town and then sold off lots to suckers arriving daily... in a gold field which would yield little gold. And he never mentioned that while he worked the theater scene in San Francisco at night, he was tunneling by day... and supposedly struck it rich (the first time) tunneling on the outskirts of town. It is more likely that he leaked his "good fortune" to the newspaper, after salting a hillside mine with gold rich gravel, and then sold it to an over-anxious greenhorn. Like all good poker players, Brown never showed his hand, not even years after it had been played. A natural showman, Ira Brown actually communicated more like a magician, always keeping his audience distracted... even flabbergasted, shining up a good story while he emptied their pockets.********************************************************************************** ************************************************************************************************************ Although this period in San Francisco launched his mode for a career pattern for profitability, Ira toldd instead on an apocryphal melodrama for his absorbant scribe- a cryptic encounter with the remains of his long-lost, footloose mother... The sadness and grief inspired would neutralize any doubts the reporter my have harbored... and replace them with sympathy and wonder...] ****************************** ************************************************************************************************************

" He was at Oroville when he read an article in the newspaper describing a woman whom he thought he recognized. He started out immediately to Dutch Flats, from where the article had come. A Chinese was pointed out to him as the one who told the story. ************* ************************************************************************************************************ Finds Mothers Skeleton.*********************************************************************************************** ************************************************************************************************************ "He gave the oriental a twenty dollar gold piece to lead the way out of town, straight to the mountains. On their way they ordered the livery stable keeper to have a hearse on the top of a certain mountain near there. They walked silently along the trail for three hours. As they went farther the path grew narrower. ********************************************************************************************* ************************************************************************************************************ At the base of a mountain the Chinese turned and began to toil up the steep ascent. ***************************************** ************************************************************************************************************ They had proceeded for half a mile when the Chinese stopped and motioned Mr. Brown to go ahead to a small ledge. He went a hundred feet. At the side of the path was something white and bleached. He touched it. Two yellow papers fell on the ground. A pair of spectacles went bounding over the rocks. It was the skeleton of his mother. *************************************************************************** ************************************************************************************************************ Tenderly as he could he gathered up the fleshless bones and placed them in a sack. Without help from his guide, who was superstitious, he slung it over his shoulder and started up the ascent, the Chinese following several rods behind. It was a mile and a half to the top of the mountain. On the summit the hearse was waiting. They put the sack within, Mr. Brown climbed up with the driver and the Chinese walked behind. This was the funeral." ********************************************************************************************************************* ************************************************************************************************************ [And this is a great story, but a search in newspapers.com reveals no such story, told by a Chinaman or anyone else, in Dutch Flat- or anywhere. Later in his retirement, his closest associates in Pennsylvania were led to believe a very different demise for his mother, and much more heroic, as they were told Elizabeth had been killed by Indians! Just a teenager, they were supposedly trying to return to the East, when according to their version she was killed and he supposedly carried her body to a suitable place in the next settlement so as to bury her properly. This tragic, incredible account was faithfully relayed by his closest friends to the local newspapers after Brown died. Of course, like the reports of his death by hanging, it made great copy and was often repeated. *********************************************** ************************************************************************************************************* The Los Angeles story about Chinese murderers is even less convincing, leaning on the racial prejudice of the times, and depending on the unlikely possibility that no scavenging wildlife bothered his mother's decaying body enough to spread her bones all over the mountain. Even if frozen for a few months, whole skeletons, left intact on top of the ground, are rarely if ever found undisturbed, flesh cleanly removed, gold rimmed glasses in place, in the wilderness a year or so later. *********************************************************************************** ************************************************************************************************************* Either way It appears that Brown was creating a dramatic, melancholic smokescreen to replace the real story, one which we will never know. But could it have been that he could not afford to associate himself with any real, living family? Were the three dead Browns of the California gold fields really his family at all? But the writer next swallows the story, hook, line and sinker....] **************************** ************************************************************************************************************* ************************************************************************************************************* " His mother had been dead a year, from all appearances. It was probable that she was traveling alone with a small amount of money. Some Chinese learned of it.****************************************************************************************************************** ************************************************************************************************************** [Ah yes, the Chinese, those notorious desperadoes! Sadly, the racist and subjective attitudes of society in that time shaped the finding of Elizabeth's bones into an anti-Chinese anecdote... again, the magician distracting the audience from what was really happening.] ** **************************************************************************************************************** Murdered by Chinese. **************************************************************************************************** **************************************************************************************************************** "They followed her from the town and on the lonely road had murdered her. Taking the money they had dragged the body up the steep ascent, where it lay unnoticed until his guide had found it. Mr. Brown's brother died soon afterward and he has never been able to locate the grave of his father." ******************************************************************************************************************************** **************************************************************************************************************** [The Brown's decimation is certainly a sad story, and intended to have that effect. Still we have to wonder how much he cared about his family, since he had lost track of all three of them, by the time he was twenty, and had no clue of their deaths or burial places. The ignorance suggests a serious breech from all of them. Interestingly, Brown supposedly returned to Pennsylvania in 1875, about the same time that their deaths were recorded there. Since there was nobody else left in California who was related to this unfortunate family, or who knew them all and who might bother to contact their home county in Pennsylvania, it can be assumed that it was Ira Brown who brought the news of their demise. Might he have made the cross-country excursion to establish their deaths, and re-establish contact with his relatives, who had not heard from his branch in many years, so that he might qualify for any inheritance due him? His mother had been left a generous settlement when her father passed away years before, possibly providing the funds they needed to travel to California, and to invest in business there. Whatever was accomplished, Ira Brown did not stay in the east long.] ************************************************************************************************** ****************************************************************************************************************** " He began mining again in the Sierra Nevada mountains at Meadow Lake, near Chico, Cal. Here the snow fell to depths of twenty to twenty five feet and completely covered the cabins. In the long winter months there was nothing to do but reread the old novels they had, play cards and eat. The food never varies. It consisted of pork and beans, bread, and coffee. For a bed they cut the tops of the spruce trees, shook them down on the floor and laid their blankets over them. Their pillows were also of spruce." ****************************************************** ******************************************************************************************************************

[Perhaps what is most astonishing, are the important elements Brown left out of his life story. He not only played a lot of cards, this must have been where he mastered the art of dealing faro, which like his women, and marriages, was left out or minimized.] ******************* ******************************************************************************************************************* " They could not get much firewood, as [all] they could cut off the trees were the tops which projected from beyond the snow. Even these they had difficulty in getting, as they would have to climb up to the roof of their cabin and start out from there on their snowshoes.******* ******************************************************************************************************************* From mining he returned to Truckee, where he played his banjo in George Stevens' saloon." ****************************************** ******************************************************************************************************************* [This would have been May of 1869... he would have been in his mid-twenties. Stevens is a very prominent name around Truckee, so all of this, like everything else in this narrative so far, is possible, if you ignore a few minor details.] ***************************************** ******************************************************************************************************************* " When the last spike was driven connecting the Central Pacific with the Union Pacific from the east at Promontory he went to Salt Lake."

Plays for Brigham Young. **************************************************************************************************** ******************************************************************************************************************* " Here he met Brigham Young and a great many of his wives. He gave several recitals of the great organ in the Salt Lake Mormon tabernacle and appeared for some time at the Salt Lake theater." ********************************************************************************** *******************************************************************************************************************

[This is actually a very humble understatement. By November of 1871, Brown was teaching guitar to worthy students in Salt Lake City. So we can add guitar and organ playing to Mr. Brown's repertoire!... It seems impossible that he might have learned any mastery of this instrument in the gold fields. We can only conclude that Ira Brown was a fast learner... or he had gained superior music skills in San Francisco...]

[By 1873, Ira brown was not only playing, he was managing a theatre at Dudlers in Salt lake City... often headlining there and weekly packing the house with his killer banjo. The Salt Lake newspaper dubbed him the "Banjo King."] *********************************************************

" He made his home with Claude Spence and his six wives. Many times Mr. Brown noticed the official shadower, Bill Hyde (above) [watching] to see that he did not prove a traitor." ****************************************************************************************** ************************************************************************************************************* [Sure enough, there was a Mormon elder named William Hyde, and he had a son named William as well. The older William was an early founder of Hyde Park, thus the name, and served as an acting Mormon bishop for a decade before it was made official in 1874.] ************** ************************************************************************************************************* " His travels next took him to Denver, Colo., where he earned $20 a night playing with Billy Nuttal. With him he went to England and from there to South Africa to the diamond fields. Lacking machinery, their dreams of making a fortune in the business soon faded, however." ************************************************************************************************************* [ According to Nuttall's known travels, all of this is possible! Brown was even a partner of Billy Nuttall's in Deadwood. But this is probably out of sequence... those adventures certainly happened two decades later, in the mid- '90's. (However, it is true that Brown seems to drop off of the radar for over a year... in 1874-75, during a time IRONICALLY, another? controversial Dick Brown opens a saloon in Viginia City, ADVERTISES LIKE CRAZY, gets involved in politics, dodges assassination attempts, and goes bankrupt... before Ira H. Brown mysteriously resurfaces in Cheyenne. Then the author of the pamphlet below changed his life direction... after he changed his own. *************************** ************************************************************************************************************** Walter P. Jenney had led a geological survey of the Black Hills in 1875 and reported that it was lacking in significant deposits of gold... then finally admitted in 1876 that it may have been different than he had originally published... giving his closest circle a head start...) ] ************************************************************************************************************* *************************************************************************************************************

" When he came back he went to Cheyenne, Wyo., where he played in McDaniels saloon until he heard that gold had been discovered by Professor Jennie, the government geologist, in the Black Hills." ******************************************************************** ************************************************************************************************************* [ It was here in Cheyenne in 1874 that Brown met up again with Fannie Garretson, performed with her, and then later in '77 returned and stole her from her common-law husband, Ed Shaughnessy. ] **************************************************************************** ************************************************************************************************************* " Anxious to be in the open again, he gathered a company of miners together. They started with covered wagons through Red canyon, taking the trip by night. They dared not break the awful stillness of the hills by talking. The Indians were watching for them." *********** ************************************************************************************************************* [Now we are back to the beginning! The newspaper reporter had a lot of trouble with the chronology, but then he probably wrote down the saga as it was told to him.] ******************************************************************************************************* *************************************************************************************************************

" Half way through the gulch they came upon a party that had started before them. The wagons stood empty in the middle of the road. The horses were gone. Mothers, with their children in their arms, lay dead under the wagons. The men were strung on the wagon tongues. Sitting Bull's band of Sioux Indians had surprised this unfortunate party."************************************************************************* ************************************************************************************************************* [By now Brown had discovered several key life secrets: the easier forgiveness than permission thing, the benefit of the doubt thing, and perhaps the plausible deniability thing. But perhaps the most important was the wealth possible making money off of those trying to earn money thing....] ************************************************************************************************************* Claims Government Land. ********************************************************************************************** ************************************************************************************************************* " Just outside of Custer City, S.D., Mr. Brown laid claim to 168 acres of land, receiving it free from the government. He sold half his interest to B. Goodell for a barrel of whisky and a watch and chain. He still wears the watch. The whisky he hauled into the town square and with a tin cup doled it out to the boys at 50 cents per cup. The land never amounted to anything. ************************************** ************************************************************************************************************* One morning he and Captain Jack Crawford, with whom he lived, were making their bread in the bread pan when a party of Indians swooped down on the town and carried off all the horses. A Dutchman just arriving on a horse was hustled off, and the two mounted the one horse and went after the Indians. They followed them until the redskins gained their camp. Then, unseen, they waited until night, when they rounded up the horses and made off with them before the Indians discovered their loss." ********************************************************************* ************************************************************************************************************* [Stealing horses back from the Indians was a common story in the Dakotas... or an excuse, especially favored among horse thieves] ************************************************************************************************************* After this he was regularly engaged as scout under General Crook and earned the title colonel." ****************************** ************************************************************************************************************* [DOUBTFUL. We all hate the idea of “stolen valor.” But an inveterate liar might lean on it heavily. There is no record that I have found so far of Ira H. Brown or "Dick Brown" ever being in the U. S. Army, or serving as a scout, much less being awarded the rank of colonel. Crook's scouts are well documented, and their list includes nobody named Ira or Dick Brown... But he may certainly have ridden with Capt. Crawford, even served as his assistant, and may even have sarcastically been called “Colonel,” by his friends, and bragged about the title a little facetiously. The claim reeks of boldness and arrogance- the most useful tool of criminals and con-men when telling a whopper is the “benefit of the doubt.” ************************************************************************************************************** ************************************************************************************************************** Being a real life buddy of Captain Jack Crawford, it is also possible that Brown served General Crook in some capacity, perhaps as a contractor... something like mule packer (SEE BELOW).] *************************************************************************************** **************************************************************************************************************

[Brown's friendship with Captain Jack Crawford (BELOW) was a long and eventful one, based on mutual origins (Pennsylvania) and love of adventure and providing entertainment. They were birds of a feather]

[Brown may have joined Capt. Crawford when he was recruited to scout for Gen. Crook, right after the Custer massacre. In another irony/coincidence, when the newspapers first reported the Custer massacre, in the same paragraph they announced a teamster named... Dick Brown had been killed as well. Research on Capt. Jack Crawford, the famous “Poet Scout” and later a protege of Buffalo Bill, led to several discoveries about "Banjo Dick," including clever songs he sang with Capt. Crawford while in camp in Deadwood, and Crawford's memories of early Deadwood which mention Banjo Dick by name. There was even a song copyrighted and printed in San Francisco: ********************************* ************************************************************************************************************* ************************************************************************************************************* The Black Hills ******************************************************************************************************* ************************************************************************************************************* As sung by Dick Brown ******************************************************************************************************** ************************************************************************************************************* Kind folks you will pity my horrible tale; *********************************************************************************** I'm an object that's needy, and looking quite stale; ************************************************************************* I gave up my trade, selling Wright's Patent Pills; ************************************************************************** ************************************************************************************************************* CHORUS************************************************************************************************************************ So don't go away, stay at home if you can, *********************************************************************************** Far away from that city, they call it Cheyenne. ****************************************************************************** For old Sitting Bull and Commanche Bill ************************************************************************************** Will raise up your hair in the dreary Black Hills **************************************************************************** ************************************************************************************************************** ************************************************************************************************************** In Cheyenne the round house is filled up ev'ry night ************************************************************************* With Pilgrims of every description in sight; ********************************************************************************* No clothes on their backs, in their pockets no bills, ************************************************************************ And yet they are striking out for the Black Hills. *************************************************************************** (CHORUS) ********************************************************************************************************************* *************************************************************************************************************** When I came to the Black Hills no gold could I find, ************************************************************************* I thought of the free lunch I left far behind; ******************************************************************************* Through rain, hail and sleet, nearly froze to the gills- ********************************************************************* They call me the orphan boy of the Black Hills. ****************************************************************************** (CHORUS) ********************************************************************************************************************* **************************************************************************************************************** Oh I wish that the man who first started this sell, *************************************************************************** was a captive and Crazy Horse had him in – well, ***************************************************************************** There is no use in grieving, or swearing like pitch, ************************************************************************** But the man who would stay here is a son of a bitch. ************************************************************************** (CHORUS)*********************************************************************************************************************** **************************************************************************************************************** So now to conclude, this advice I'll unfold; ********************************************************************************** Don't come to the Black Hills a looking for gold. ***************************************************************************** For Big Wallapie and Commanche Bill,******************************************************************************************* Are scouting I'm told, in the dreary Black Hills.****************************************************************************** (CHORUS)*********************************************************************************************************************** ***************************************************************************************************************** [In Capt. Crawford's Ho! For The Black Hills, it was explained that this ballad was written and performed by “Banjo Dick” Brown, “...one of Jack Crawford's closest companions during his Black Hills adventure. Brown was a long-time gold-camp entertainer in California, Colorado and Dakota Territory before embarking for Australia in 1879.” ******* The California interview now continues....] ************************* ****************************************************************************************************************** " It is the belief of Mr. Brown that General Custer could have been saved and with him the lives of the heroes who perished at the hands of the Sioux if he and his company, who were only fifteen miles away, had been instructed to go to them."******************************

" In 1876, just after the founding of Deadwood, he started to make a tour of the world, On his way to Honolulu he stopped at the Cannibal islands and met King Thackenblau, about whom the nursery rhyme, Hoki Poki, Unkum Pum, King of the Cannibal islands, was written."******** ******************************************************************************************************************* [Brown's comments about the Custer battle are typical western bravado... Again, the reporter has been overwhelmed, and prematurely launched Brown into his first world tour... which did not begin until 1879. And he made a second tour much later, and it had to have been- to have caught Robert Louis Stevenson in Samoa. Stevenson did not arrive there until 1889, and King Thakumbau died that same year... limiting this Pacific visit to a narrow window of time. At this time, Brown was an International sales agent for the E. W. Gillett Co. of Chicago, makers of Magic Yeast, Royal Baking Powder, and food flavorings, and traveled extensively all over the world. Somehow, that detail also gets left out of his life story... which becomes more believable when the details are in the proper order.] ********************************************************* ********************************************************************************************************************

Was Guest of Stevenson. *************************************************************************************************** ********************************************************************************************************************* " In Samoa he was entertained by Robert Louis Stevenson and his wife in their beautiful home, overlooking the bay, which had just been sold to the Germans...." ********************************************************************************************************************** ********************************************************************************************************************** [NEXT: THE INCREDIBLE DETAILS IRA BROWN LEFT OUT!]