You don't expect an American
Red Indian to be buried in rainy Manchester do you? However a friend told me
he’d read about "Charging Thunder" so I went to investigate and found
his grave by an evergreen tree. Here I am with the more-staidly named George
Williams ("Charing Thunder" sounds much cooler.)
He was part of a spectacular group touring the
country with a Wild West Show. It'd stopped in Birmingham and London (Queen
Victoria was a big fan) and in November 1887 it arrived in Salford in
Manchester. It must have been quite a sight as they arrived - 97 Native
Americans, 180 broncos, 18 buffalo, 14 mules and donkeys, 10 elk and two deer. They
stayed in the UK for five months, playing to packed houses from a site on the
banks of the River Irwell (now occupied by The Lowry gallery.)
Charging Thunder's boss was Bill Cody who’d
scouted for Native Americans for the US army and killed buffalo to feed the
soldiers before establishing his circus-like Wild West show in 1883. The show
was some spectacle: cowboys and Indians recreating classic gun-slinging scenes
from the Wild West, do daring acts of horsemanship, gun-shot tricks, shootouts,
rough riding, stagecoach-jumping and rounding up a herd of buffalo. Charging Thunder
was an exceptional horseman and performed thrilling stunts.
In 1903 he was 26 years-old and found himself
back in Salford. He fell in love and gave up his touring life and connections
to home and never once returned to his prairie homelands in America. He married
Josephine who one of the American horse trainers in the show and they settled
in Gorton. Going through the immigration process he changed his name to George
Williams, raised a family and disappeared into anonymity. For money he worked as a handyman at an
industrial pump factory, as a doorman at a cinema, and looked at the elephants
at Belle Vue circus (he rode Nellie in the shows.)
You'd think someone called Charging Thunder would live for 300 years wouldn't
you but he died of pneumonia aged 52.
I had a small photograph of the grave but it was so
aquatint it me the headstone's shape. More helpful was the outline of a huge
industrial building in the background. This pulled me into the correct part of
the cemetery and then - after 15 minutes - the grave itself. It looks like
family members are still alive as a few trinkets are about the headstone. Some
places in Manchester have since been named after the touring group : Cody
Court, Sundance Court, Dakota Avenue, and Kansas Avenue.
"Not many red Indians around Manchester,"
I said probably aloud, saluted and left. Thanks for telling me about this one,
Tony.