The following article, which first ran in a 1971 issue of the Buckskin Bulletin, will explain more. It was written by the late Don Russell, editor of the “Chicago Brand Book” for many years.
Who is Old Joe? He’s the bleached buffalo skull with “THE” between his horns and “WESTERNERS” below his chin. You’ll find him on letterheads and publications issued by Corrals and Posses from Chicago to Washington, Los Angeles to London and Omaha to Munich. No Westerner tradition runs deeper. And fortunately, because of the reportorial genius of the late Elmo Scott Watson, my predecessor on the Chicago Brand Book, we can trace Old Joe back to his beginnings.
Our very first skull (drawn, I think, by Burleigh Withers) was in brown ink on tinted stock bearing the sole word “Westerners.” Elmo had it done by inexpensive offset or mimeograph for letterheads. The same sketch, sometimes copied by a stylus in inept hands, was used for the first two years of the mimeographed Chicago Brand Book. Letter-press printing came with the March 1946 (Vol. III, No. 1) issue, and on both nameplate and masthead Old Joe shows in the now familiar form.
The artist seemingly copied the Charles Russell skull long used by the Potomac Corral as its emblem. But who was he? And when did he do it?
The Old Joe sketch first shows up in the beautifully executed scroll attesting Honorary Life Membership in the Chicago Corral for Sergeant Charles A. Windolph, one of the 24 Seventh Cavalry Troopers awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for heroism at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, June 25-26, 1876. Windolph, serving with Reno, had risked his life to fetch water to the wounded. The scroll was ready in October, 1944.
It seems to have been done under the enthusiastic direction of Wyoming-reared Burleigh Withers, himself an artist and a proprietor of Withers-McCallum-Stearns, a then well- known Chicago commercial art studio. The final mimeographed Brand Book, January- February, 1946, answers the question as to the artist. Noting that scrolls had been sent to three Honorary Life Members--Sergeant Windolph, Philip Fairbault Wells (a veteran of the 1890-91 engagement at Wounded Knee), and Stewart Edward White (whose novel The Westerners may have suggested our name)--it added “The calligraphy (hand lettering to you) on these scrolls is executed by Resident Member Raymond F. DaBoll and buffalo skull emblem of Westerners, is painted in gold on them by M. Martin Johnson.” A Chicago Westerner, he later became an LA charter member.
What is the history of the Westerners International symbol “Old Joe?” The following article on this subject was first printed in the Summer 1971 issue of the Buckskin Bulletin. Author was the late Don Russell, editor of the Chicago Brand Book.
If you’ve howdied with Chicago Westerners you’ve seen it happen. Everyone stands in Napoleonic stance, right hand over the heart. As the Sheriff counts, “One, two, THREE!” the two newest members heist the “veil” from the bison skull on the wall and all yell:
“Hello JOE, you old BUFFALO!”
They grin, they sit, they grin some more--and then the meeting gets going. One dinner and a speech (with probably an argument or two) later the ritual is repeated in reverse with “Adios JOE, you old BUFFALO!” It’s an old and well understood tradition that, with those words, any acrimony aroused by those arguments ceases then and there.
The Chicago Westerner salute to Old Joe dates back to 1956-57. One roundup night, cofounder Leland D. Case scribbled a note that was passed up to Sheriff John Jameson suggesting the white skull on the wall be named after a remembered sing-song childhood rhyme:
“Joe, Joe, broke his toe, riding on a buffalo!”
Sheriff Jameson, top-level idea man for a national advertising agency, was quick on the uptake. So the Old Joe opening gambit was adopted that very night. Some time later, no one seems to remember when, we added the closing “adios” bit.
Old Joe himself--the actual bone, I now mean--got into our orbit as early as January, 1947. Edmund B. Rogers was telling Chicago Westerners about Yellowstone Park of which he was superintendent. Observing the printed emblem on our Brand Book, he asked if we’d like to have a real bison skull. We did-- and soon it came. Where Rogers got it I never learned but a few years later when Sheriff Roy F. Dunne and Deputy Archer Jackson cleaned it up they discovered remnants inside of a field-mouse nest. Till then a tablecloth had served as Old Joe’s “veil,” they substituted an Indian-type shield.
Disaster and a never-solved mystery struck in late 1959. Old Joe got lost. Perhaps kidnapped! We had been meeting near Chicago’s beloved Water Tower, a relic of the big fire of 1871, in Normandy House. When that building was razed, its name was transferred to another a half block away at 744 N. Rush Street, now in the heart of the nightclub district.