what traveling with a wagon train was really like

Above Fred Stone was a famous Vaudeville performer, one of the best. He was also the best friend of Will Rogers. Among his many achievements, he played the Scarecrow in the 1902 stage production of the Wizard of Oz. He is shown above with David Montgomery, who was cast as the Tin Woodman.

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Fred Stone (in his autobiography), Rolling Stone. New York: Whittlesey House, 1945, pp. 3 and 5—

The day they were married, my father and mother hitched their team to a prairie schooner and joined the procession that was trailing out across Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, and Colorado…

We went into Garden City, Kansas—so called because there wasn’t a garden within a thousand miles—with a train of seventy-three prairie schooners. People were traveling together for protection from the Indians, for there were still Indian raids over the prairies, and buffalo, bear, and deer were plentiful. But though I saw lots of Indians at Garden City, they were all friendly, and the only marauders father had to contend with were the white men who tried to steal everything in those covered wagons, from the bedding to the wooden wheels. So when father stood on watch all night, with a shotgun in his hand, it was not because any redskin was going to bite the dust. It was because some of his fellow travelers were as apt as not to take his prairie schooner apart in the night if there was anything in it they fancied.

Iowa's Buffalo Bill Is the Man in the Moon

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Vincent Starrett (Chicago Tribune book columnist Charles Vincent Emerson Starrett), Born in a Bookshop: Chapters from the Chicago Renascence. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965, p. 154—

My only other clear memory of Washington days is a visit to Keith's Theater, where I heard and met the famous old minstrel James Thornton and his wife Bonnie. The rest of the bill was a bust as far as I was concerned, but the opportunity to meet the man who had written "When You Were Sweet Sixteen"—to say nothing of "My Sweetheart's the Man in the Moon" and "The Irish Jubilee"—was too good to miss…But I was sorry to have missed an encounter, a few weeks earlier, between Jimmy and Colonel William F. Cody. The theater manager told me about it with great glee. Cody also had been eager to meet an old favorite, and Jimmy had been brought around to his box. The manager made the introductions. "Jimmy," he said, "I want you to meet the famous Buffalo Bill, who is an admirer of yours." "Glad to know you, Mr. Bill," said Jimmy, shaking hands solemnly. "What part of Buffalo do you come from?"

The secret handshake?