[published on Patreon 11/1/19]

The crime

From the book jacket: "Edgar Laplante was a small-time grifter, virtuoso singer, and handsome young charmer. ... In the fall of 1917, he reinvented himself as Chief White Elk: a buck-skinned, feathered-headdressed war hero, sports star, civil rights campaigner, leader of the Cherokee nation -- and total fraud." This, mind you, is after he'd reinvented an actual person named Tom Longboat, as himself. It also does not mention the bigamy and morphine addiction. After international authorities finally coordinated their efforts to stop him from jumping hotel bills in half a dozen European countries, he went to jail in the late '20s, then returned to the States and to small-time vaudevillean grifts, but the world had left his brand of flimflam behind.

The story