Just Passing Through: Con Men in Humboldt County

Humboldt County has seen its fair share of famous people pass through- the first one that comes to mind is Ulysses S. Grant, who was stationed at Fort Humboldt for a time. Being a rural outpost on the “wild west”, Humboldt County also saw its fair share of infamous passers-through though. Recently I found out that Baby Face Nelson stayed over in Eureka while on the run for a period of time (check out our Prohibition exhibit this fall for more on that). Infamous faces with smaller profiles made their appearances here too though, and their stories can be just as big and flashy as the bigger names.

The Great Fer-Don!

During summertime festivals in turn of the century Eureka, a man known as “the Great Fer-Don” made an appearance in the county. He was your typical showman, parading into town, doing a few shows, and moving along. The Humboldt Historian article mentioning “the Great Fer-Don” (Entertainers, Hucksters, and Stunts by Glen Nash) ends with Fer-Don traveling southward when the weather began turning sour, so I tried to follow the tracks. Turns out Fer-Don’s story is a decades long one spanning the entire west coast involving muckracker journalism, arrests, warrants, changing identities, fame, and obscurity. Eureka was just one chapter of his story.

“The Great Fer-Don” started his life out as John Ferdon. He started out in the con game at age 14, working with a man known as Nevada Ned who solve a concoction of sweetened condensed milk and cocaine as a cold remedy. He branched out on his own as a showy Quaker known as “The Great Kamama” by selling bottled of liquid (water with some alcohol and food coloring) that would expel monstrous tape worms from patient’s bodies. Other “Quaker” con-men came on the scene, Ferdon had 50 run ins with the law for illegally practicing medicine as his Quaker persona and Ferdon changed his act. In 1906, news came from Europe about a special form of medicine that allowed doctors to heal patients without surgery. Ferdon found his new act.

On August 3, 1908, Ferdon arrived in Eureka with pomp and circumstance in brightly painted horse drawn wagons. He set up what sounds like a circus tent at 4th and I Streets and an office in the Weck building at 311 F Street and the following day held a parade traveling around town with a band called the Great Diamond Cluster Band for a few hours before ending at the circus tent for the main event. An estimated 10,000 people came out to Fer-Don’s act, which began with him throwing silver dollars into the crowd. The main act was Fer-Don discussing his staff of European medical professionals at the Weck Office healing of members of the audience. Ferdon told reporters that he kept files on the people who were treated to prove his work wasn’t a fraud, oftentimes referencing specific people from the community as proof of his truthful work. He said he also published the names and addresses of people who were healed by his practice so people could investigate for themselves. In September, Ferdon left Eureka and headed south to Santa Rosa.

Advertisement for the Great Ferdon. Courtesy of HCHS "Entertainers, Hucksters, and Stunts" Humboldt Historian

From Chico Record, Number 209, 30 August 1908

Jeff Elliot of I See by the Papers a blog on the history of Sonoma County, claims “Santa Rosa had never seen a scam artist like James M. Ferdon”. From how Fer-Don’s show was described in Eureka, that claim seems a bit excessive. Elliot elaborates on his claim- part of Ferdon’s scam was that he would advertise in the papers using legitimate looking newspaper articles embedded with the regular news (at the time, ads were located on the back page or lower half of the newspapers rather than mixed in with articles). The realistic articles could easily trick readers and added a new dimension of slight of hand to Ferdon’s con. It’s very likely that Ferdon ran articles like these locally while he was in Eureka. Some papers refused to run the article-advertisements, and it was oftentimes these papers that would investigate Ferdon, discover his costly ‘treatments’ (which sometimes cost more than a person might make in a month at the time) were more magic tricks than anything else, and eventually run him out of town. Ferdon addressed the people who ran him out of town with this statement: "[E]nmity always follows success, and there is always a certain class of humanity ready to cry 'humbug,' 'fake,' and 'quack,' but such howlers and defamers of honest characters are very seldom successful in any line of business because they do not attend to their own. They are too busy sticking their noses into the affairs of others."  

Ferdon was issued a warrant for his arrest, in Washington after spending time running his con there and went underground before reviving the con a few months later. He was later fined in Sacramento, bailed out by his wife, and disappeared to shapeshift into another con. His later namesakes included “The Great Lavita” which was an identical con to “Great Fer-Don” and “the Great Pizaro” selling cactus juice and “great Catarrh Remedy” of Borax and salts. He was later jailed at a federal penitentiary for his medical scams and died in 1944.

Article titled "Warrant for Fer-Don" from the Highland Park News-Herald & Journal, Number 5, 9 July 1910

Fer-Don may have been a showman by trade, using flashy European medicine and the local newspapers to legitimize his “work” in treating local residents, but one con man who passed through Humboldt County took his con the extra mile. “Chief White Elk” had a career that spanned the country and overseas with a larger than life persona, disguised as a veteran and a Native American Chief, when he was, in reality, neither of those things.

Chief White Elk

Edgar Laponte, later known as Chief White Elk, was born in Rhode Island. He started his con work early like Ferdon did, at age 14 walking around town asking other businesses to donate and help save another business that was in need. He was caught by the police and sent to boarding school in hopes of straightening out the boy- it didn’t work. His next gig was when he was in his 20s dressing up as a Native American at Coney Island to attract attention to an attraction.  

"Chief White Elk". Courtesy Library of Congress

Laponte became Longboat, Tom Longboat, a famous Canadian marathon runner and member of the Iroquois Nation. Laponte hosted running clinics and other events as Longboat, who at the time was fighting in World War I overseas. The real Longboat found out about the con and Laponte shape shifted into his most famous form: Chief White Elk.  

In this persona, he was a movie star, war hero, singer, speaker of 21 languages and dressed in a Plains buckskin, including a war bonnet made of “eagle” (turkey) feathers. He traveled around raising money for War Bonds to support the ongoing War, and appears at a fundraiser at Holmes Flat in Southern Humboldt on July 4, 1917, as documented by a photo donated to the Humboldt County Historical Society by Velma Childs Titus in 2017. Next to the “Chief”, there is a short woman whom he later married. Emma Freeman took photos of the duo among the redwoods in Humboldt County, and these photos appear in the Clarke collections.

"Chief White Elk" and Bertha "Princess Athatron" Thompson. Photo by Emma Freeman. Cat #: 2005.064.029

Headline from the Chico Record, Number 156, 2 July 1918

"Chief White Elk" and Bertha Thompson. Cat # 1961.40.3B

In his disguise, Laponte married Bertha Thompson, daughter of Lucy Thompson of the Klamath tribe and author of “To the American Indian”. The extravagant wedding took place in 1918 at the Capitol in Salt Lake City with full military honors, an attendance of 5,000 people, 31 piece band and 10 bridesmaids. It didn’t last, as Laponte was an alcoholic and cocaine user, and, depending on who you ask, Bertha left or Laponte abandoned her. It wasn't until years later that Bertha hired an attorney to learn more about the Chief's Cherokee ancestry- and learned that he was a conman.

From The Chico Record, Number 278, 22 November 1918

“Chief White Elk” continued with his con and traveled to Canada and Europe raising money for bogus causes and skipping town when the gig was up. He married again, tried to meet the queen of England, met with Benito Mussolini under the pretense that the chief was the first and only American Indian fascist, was arrested in Italy and Switzerland, returned to the States, selling his gold teeth for cigarettes, and, after a few more years of traveling around in different versions of his "movie star, educated Indian" guise, had two heart attacks, one which landed him in the hospital while he was in Eureka, and died from pneumonia at the age of 62 in 1944 in Phoenix, AZ. 

Resources used in this post include:
Entertainers, Hucksters, and Stunt by Glen Nash, Humboldt Historian, March-April 1986
A Big Welcome to the Flimflam Man and On Tuesday the Monster Came to Town by Jeff Elliot from I See From the Papers
Edgar Laplante: Imposter by Rupert Taylor
Living History: Chief White Elk was a show-stopper in Salt Lake City by Ardis E Parshall, Salt Lake Tribune
War Bonds Rally at Holmes Flat: Who is the Interloper in this Picture?, Humboldt Historian December 2014
Newspaper clippings found through UC Riverside's California Digital Newspaper Collection, which can be accessed here
"The Black Lies of Chief White Elk" in Both Sides of the Bluff, Jerry Rohde
​See also:
Snake Oil, Hustlers and Hambones: The American Medicine Show by Ann Anderson
King Con:  The Bizarre Adventures of the Jazz Age's Greatest Imposter by Paul Willetts
White Elk, Black Shirt by Paul Willetts, Powell Books