Part One: The Advent of the Great Nanzetta
It was while I was researching the story on Police Chief Morris in December of 2018 that I first ran into the name Nanzetta. It was a newspaper article published by the Register and Bee in October of 1909 which described the arrest of a man, by Morris, for forging a check written by the Indian medicine doctor J.H. Nanzetta.
It wasn’t long after that, while researching for a post on patent medicines and weird cures of the past, that I ran into Nanzetta again … and again. Not only did he advertise extensively in the local papers, but he seemed to be always in trouble with the law. The Edgar Stripling story had taken place during prohibition and during a time of rapidly changing laws around the practice of medicine and the manufacture and distribution of drugs (including alcohol), and so there was quite a lot to be said in the papers and in the courtrooms about Mr. Nanzetta’s wares and his wild claims about them.
Curious, I continued searching until I found the very first account of a man who, by description and name, could very well have been him. The reports of him, covered by half a dozen reporters, was astonishing, brazen, wonderful, utterly fantastic, and undoubtedly a lie. But, true or not, it was a fascinating story.
1902
Undoubtedly, the part Nanzetta played on that April evening of 1902 when he entered Denver’s grand Albany Hotel was a practiced one and one which he had played many times before, but for whatever reason, the occasion of a Mexican prince’s arrival that day seemed a significant one. Many believed his story. Others understood him to be an impostor, but they watched and listened and played along with the charade, nevertheless. The young “prince”, at least on this first occasion, took his audience’s doubt in stride and subsequently played to their weaknesses. His story was a sad one, his plight filled with tragedy and survival against all odds. He was charming, elegant in dress and manner, convincing, utterly unruffled by accusations of an ulterior motive, completely mesmerizing, “strikingly handsome,” and, at the very least, seemingly harmless. And in the days before television and radio, he was an entertaining and welcome distraction.
Not long after scrawling his very long signature upon the hotel register, the reporters arrived to document the event for the benefit of the Denver citizens who did not yet know that royalty had arrived in their midst. These reporters described in detail the young “prince’s” arrival; his striking appearance; his claims of nobility; and his story of exile, love, and heartbreak, chivalry and death-defying duels, bounty hunters, and his lonely wanderings after being exiled from his home and the land of his inheritance. The story then spread by train and by telegraph, and by the time Prince Nanzetta arrived in Montana, six months later, reports of him had been published from coast to coast. One article which ran repeatedly over the course of three years appeared in more than seventy papers nationwide.
These early accounts of him were consistent in their description of the man who might easily have been mistaken for a woman, with his fine and elegant features, his diminutive stature, and his small hands and feet. One account even described him as frail. Certainly, no description of him failed to mention his long and lustrous black hair which fell in waves to his shoulders. Those who reported on
his arrival in Denver, and then later in Omaha, Butte, and Salt Lake City described him as a dapper, dark-skinned Mexican youth with a mysterious air of suavity who possessed piercing eyes. In his tailor-made Prince Albert suit of tan and a wide brimmed hat, he presented himself as a “well-dressed Mexican”. As an accessory, he carried with him an intricately carved cane, and he held onto it with fingers that were weighted down by several rings of large (and apparently authentic) jewels—diamonds, rubies, emeralds, opals, and pearls. He spoke with a “charming voice” of “beautiful English, bearing only the slightest accent”, which, together with his “aristocratic features” left quite an impression.
As to his age, there was some variance in the accounts. He was sometimes twenty-three, at other times a year older or younger. The Paducah Sun reported that “[T]he young man is said to be some thirty years of age, but his looks belie that statement and fifteen would come nearer what he appears.” Indeed, his appearance of youth seems to have been an obstacle between himself and his aims for the first several years of his career as a seller of patent remedies.
The accomplishments he claimed to have acquired during those years was impressive—perhaps too impressive. Apart from the skills necessary to tell his wild and fantastic story (specifically, the skills of being a famous duelist, proficient with a knife and a pistol, and a world traveler who had seen some 39 countries) he had been educated in both law and medicine at Stanford, spoke several languages fluently. He was also an expert ping-pong player and virtuoso violinist. On one occasion he boasted of having established a hospital for Mexican exiles in Salt Lake City. Of his many claims, one, at least, is true: he was a talented and convincing actor.
As an actor, he was perhaps unparalleled in the world of medicine shows and quack cure pitchmen. Unlike other medicine men who either sold their wares as an extension of their exaggerated but otherwise ordinary selves or, in contrast, those who donned a temporary costume for their street or tent performances, Nanzetta became his act. Perhaps he believed it or grew to believe it. Or, just possibly, a portion of it was true enough that the rest was simply a fanciful elaboration. Certainly, it was much easier to convince your audience to believe your story (and to convince hotels to let you stay) if you, at least in part, believe it yourself—as he appears to have done. His coolness under examination and his quiet and elegant manner, at least as it was described by eyewitnesses, reflects a sophistication, at the very least an intelligence, that is difficult to fake.
His story seems unbelievable by today’s standards, and even in 1902, those who gathered in crowds to hear his story were sometimes uncertain whether to believe him or not, but one thing was for certain, he was a skilled storyteller, and in the days before television and radio, there were many people glad of any form of entertainment that didn’t cost them.
To be sure, the entertainment was free. What wasn’t free were the medicines he brought with him.
What exactly he was selling in those early accounts is not entirely clear, and the reporting seems to be more focused on the stories he had to tell than on the medicine he was pitching. In August of 1902, the Butte Daily Post relayed the event of Nanzeta’s arrival in Missoula thusly: “When Nanzeta alighted from the train … he had in charge several boxes of Swamp Root, which were carried to his hotel by a boy.” Just days later, he was in Dillon, 170 miles south, and there “mounted on a box … he began telling the crowd of spectators of the wonderful curative powers of a liniment of which he was the sole manufacturer and purveyor.” In all likely hood, this system of “manufacture” most likely consisted of a salve or some other fairly innocent topical remedy which he purchased in one of the local shops, took back to his rooms, and mixed by hand, after which he would have affixed a new label on it, printed and prepared in advance. The trick was to extol the virtues of such a remedy so highly that no one present felt they could live without it. This was often combined with a long list of ailments such cures could “heal” and they symptoms, of which every person in the audience was currently suffering under at least one. There was often a trick or a manipulation of some sort. In Hempstead, Texas, a small town about 50 miles north west of Houston, his methods were described in some detail in the Houston Chronicle of November. 10, 1902.
“In glowing words [Nanzeta] told how such a one had been cured even when the undertaker had been telephoned for to take his measure. He said that the medicine would not fail, being based on such principle that but on minute portion was enough to make Ponce De Leon shed tears of sorrow that it had fallen to the lot of another to discover the fountain of eternal growth. He expatiated so largely upon its merits that a few were induced to buy. Upon tendering their $1 in payment, they were agreeably surprised to find a crisp dollar bill protruding from the package. They bought more. In every instance, their dollar was returned. A new sort of cure-all was introduced. This cost $2 per bottle. It was as quickly bought as the other, and every time their money was given back. They thought they had struck rather an eccentric foreigner, but if he wished to make them presents of such valuable remedies, it was certainly up to them to accept. At least none of them demurred.
“About this time, a revivifying, re-electrifying , rehabilitating, and rejuvenating medicine was produced that made the other preparations look like the proverbial 30 cents. What the medicine could do in the way of relieving human ills was a revelation. It cost $5per bottle. Just as eagerly as the other was bought, so was this: even more so, because each pucrhaser thought he had a cinch in getting his money back.
“When he had sol the last bottle and pocketed in the b=neighborhood of $100, he made a polite and sweeping bow and steeped off the box. There was nothing doing anent the return of the coin.”
While this count is obviously laced with a heavy dose of sarcasm and intentional exaggeration evident of the reporter’s doubt and distrust, its clear Nanzeta made an impression on those who gave him audience. Not every newspaper report is so filled with scorn, either. Other reports marveled at the arrival of a bona fide prince from Mexico. To our ears, such a story as his is obviously an invention. It’s too wild, too outlandish, too full of inaccuracies and inconsistencies and holes. So what made it so believable to those who gathered to hear him in 1902? For certain it had something to do with the sheer boredom and tedium of rural life at the turn of the twentieth century. Rural towns were preferred by pitchmen over larger cities simply because those that lived on farms and in rural areas were less educated. They didn’t have time for schooling when cattle needed to be fed and land needed to be tamed and crops planted. But there is something, too, to be considered about the story teller. Clearly Nanzeta looked the part of royalty, and it was a perception that went beyond the clothes he wore, which were sometimes very fine and expensive and sometimes very plain and unassuming. He spoke as that of a learned man, and one of some elegance and refinement. However good an actor he was, those things are difficult to fake. But more than that, he was a striking figure. Some might consider him beautiful. And with his extraordinary looks, he confused and captivated his eager listeners. And we love to be captivated!
Accounts of Nanzeta’s appearance, offered to us through the many newspaper accounts of him in 1902, are fairly consistent in their descriptions of him. Two minor exceptions occur. The first is in May when he arrives in Omaha. “He is tall,” the newspaper reported, “sinewy, with long straight black hair, and possesses black piercing eyes, the lkes of which are seldom encountered”. In October, when he appears in Galena, Kansas under the name Prince Nanzeta Di Velasco Montezuma, he is described as being short with “clear-skin, jet-black hair and blue eyes”. It’s also the first time we see this version of his name, which, up to now (with the exception of an ‘M’ replacing the ‘N’ in Nanzeta, which might easily have been a reporting or typesetting error) has been consistent.
Nanzeta’s story, that which captivated and amazed those who heard it, is too long to set down here, with its many variances and exaggerations, but the principle elements are these: Nanzeta was the son of the present-day ruler of Sacred City, the capital of the Aztecs, where he exists as the last descendant of Montezuma and heir to the Aztec throne. A year prior, at the time of the Mexican uprising, Nanzeta had led a group of Yaqui Indians against the Mexican army. While in Mexico City, the prince met a young woman with whom he had fallen in love, but duty called him away. In his absence, she was wooed by a colonel of the Mexican army whose advances she rejected. In his anger, the colonel killed her. The prince, having heard of this tragedy, returned to Mexico City and challenged the colonel to a duel, which, of course, he won, but his crime made him an exile. He fled Mexico and certain execution and arrived in the United States as an exile and a wanderer, selling medicine until he could get his pardon and return to his home.
Of course this isn’t his first time in the States. He was sent to California in 1895 to attend Stanford, where, as we have already said, he graduated with degrees in medicine and law and where he learned to speak English and play the violin and ping-pong, etc. By his own confession, he would have been about 14 at the time of his admission into the prestigious university, but what is age but a number?
I’ve attached some further reading below. The first is a dramatization I wrote when I thought this book would be historical fiction or creative non-fiction. Because his story was published in so many papers, and because I want to take advantage of the dramatic nature of his arrival, I wrote a dramatized version of his “advent”. Another link below will take you to some of the actual newspaper articles, so you can read the account for yourself if you like.
For the purposes, first and foremost, of setting down the foundational elements of Nanzetta’s “history” as he tells it, and to keep this first post from getting too long, I’m going to give our dear readers a couple of options.
Firstly, because his story was published by several different reporters and appeared in several different newspapers, each article therefore includes different details, I took an artistic view of it and have created an amalgamation in creative non-fiction form. To read that version, please click the button below which will take you to my personal website.
In the event you are more inclined to read the facts for yourselves, I’ve posted a few of the original articles detailing some of his various appearances throughout 1902 at the link below. They are long but wildly fascinating—as is the whole of Nanzetta’s story. I hope you’ll follow along as I document my evolving research.
Sources:
Various newspaper accounts from 1899-1936, 1991-1993, found at Newspapers.com and Internet Archives (archive.com).
Danville Historical Society Newsletter, August 2017, David Corp
