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This is Not a Lecture…Captain Jack Crawford, “The Poet Scout,” in His Wonderful Entertainments, “The Camp Fire and the Trail.”

Granville, NY, 1897. Broadsheet, 12.125” x 9.5”. CONDITION: Good, some minor losses and creasing to margins, about a dozen small tears repaired with tape on verso, not affecting contents, light foxing.

A rare broadsheet promoting a speaking engagement by Wild West storyteller “Captain Jack” Crawford, known as the “Poet Scout,” featuring numerous positive testimonials and advertising a Klondike Gold Rush investment opportunity.

Held in Granville, New York, the one-man-show was to feature “two hours of rare enjoyment” with Crawford, including poetry recitations, storytelling, humorous anecdotes, songs, “glowing pictures of the borderlands,” and a “wonderful temperance story.” The event was scheduled for the night of December 30th, 1897, in Norton Hall. The majority of the text consists of numerous positive endorsements praising Crawford’s captivating storytelling, as well as his family-friendly appeal. Crawford was a teetotaler who claimed that his lifelong avoidance of alcohol stemmed from a promise he had made to his mother. One such endorsement, by a “Bishop” C. C. McCabe, describes him as follows: 

Here is a man whose deeds of daring equal anything boys and girls read about in books of romance, and they were performed by a Christian man: one who loved God and his Country and his Mother too much to stain his record with profanity and his soul with impurity.

Additional comments describe Crawford as a “natural entertainer” with a “remarkable memory and inimitable wit,” who captivated audiences across the East and Midwest. One endorsement from newspaper writer Nixon Waterman even includes a custom poem extolling Captain Jack as a “prophet of a boundless creed.” The testimonials are attributed to a variety of individuals, including representatives of publications and organizations across several states where Crawford had recently performed, namely Ohio, Massachusetts, and Minnesota. 

On the verso appears a special notice announcing Crawford’s imminent departure to seek gold in Alaska along with a “small band of picked followers.” It summarizes Crawford’s past prospecting successes and includes a section for interested parties to write their names to receive a prospectus for the “Capt. Jack Crawford Alaska Prospecting and Mining Co.”

Born in Ireland, John “Captain Jack” Wallace Crawford (1847–1917), who adopted the alias “The Poet Scout,” was an author who chronicled the Wild West and was also a popular performer. After his family emigrated to Pennsylvania, Crawford worked in the coal mines. At fifteen, he lied about his age and joined the Pennsylvania Regulars during the Civil War. After being wounded three times he was nursed back to health in a hospital near Philadelphia, during which he was taught by nuns how to read and write. In 1875 Crawford was appointed a Captain of the Black Hills Rangers of Dakota and in 1876 he met Buffalo Bill Cody, whom he replaced as Chief of Scouts of the 5th Cavalry. Under the command of Eugene Carr, Crawford made a famous horseback ride with urgent news from the Battle of Slim Buttes to Fort Laramie—a distance of 350 miles in six days. The Battle of Slim Buttes took place in September 1876 and constituted the U.S. Army’s first victory over the Sioux after the defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. In the same year, Crawford became an entertainer in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, often performing lead roles based on his own life. The next year Buffalo Bill and Crawford’s stage partnership ended in Nevada when Crawford accidentally shot himself in the groin during a combat scene. Crawford’s first book, The Poet Scout: Being a Selection of Incidental and Illustrative Verses and Songs, was published in San Francisco in 1879. The same year, he moved to New Mexico Territory and began scouting for the U.S. Army again, and also found work as a post-trader at Fort Craig in New Mexico. He spent the rest of his life working as an actor, lecturer, and special government agent. 

OCLC records three holdings at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Yale University, and Southern Methodist University. 

A scarce broadsheet advertising a performance by the famous “Poet Scout” Captain Jack Crawford in Granville, New York. 

REFERENCES: McLure, Nancy. “The ‘Poet Scout’ Captain Jack Crawford – Points West Online” at Buffalo Bill Center of the West online.

Item #10538

Price: $375.00

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