The Tall Tale of 'Bluffier Ben'
A boastful trapper spins wild, bloody yarns for free drinks in a Seattle saloon, leaving the barkeep to settle the tab.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
A stranger walked into a saloon on West Van Buren street—a young man whose face had not been washed for six months, dressed in a slouch hat, buckskin breeches, a red flannel shirt open at the back, and a rough coat. He carried four revolvers and a big knife. When four dry-goods clerks ordered beer, the barkeep whispered, 'That is Bluffier Ben, the Wild Trapper of the plains.' The clerks bought him drinks, and Ben launched into a series of absurd, gruesome tales of killing men in St. Jo and Lafayette, Arkansas, and claiming to have killed hundreds of Indians. As he continued to drink on their tab, he spun wild stories about the Black Hills being filled with gold nuggets the size of eagles. When the clerks finally left, the barkeep took his twenty percent commission from the bar tab and told Ben to remember that it was grasshoppers that flew, not buffaloes.
“I never drink when I'm off the war-trail. It kinder makes me ugly, yer see, and I'm apt to drop my cutlery.”
This story highlights the 19th-century American obsession with the 'Wild West' mythos, a persona that traveling con-men often used to exploit city dwellers. Today, Seattle’s local character is less about rugged trappers and more about the performative tech-bro 'hustler' culture, though the underlying impulse to buy a drink for a good story remains a timeless urban ritual.
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