On March 8, 1918, Simon Bamberger, the governor of Utah, gave his blessing for a wedding to take place in the state capitol. Chief White Elk, a distinguished Cherokee and an American war hero, would marry Burtha Thompson, a half-white, half-Native American woman who went by Princess Ah-Tra-Ah-Saun.

The wedding was a grand, public affair. A prestigious local jeweler donated an 18-karat Tiffany wedding band, and a local military commander honored the chief’s service by bestowing full military honors on the ceremony. The wedding was also covered by local newspapers The Salt Lake Tribune and the East Oregonian.

Yet throughout the event, it was never questioned how no one there, including the governor and the bride, had known the chief for more than two days.

In truth, they knew nothing about him, because he wasn’t a chief at all. He wasn’t even Native American.

According to the new book “King Con: The Bizarre Adventures of the Jazz Age’s Greatest Impostor,” by Paul Willetts (Crown), out now, Chief White Elk was really Edgar Laplante, a con-man extraordinaire who duped local merchants, admiring women and world leaders alike.

Laplante was born sometime around 1888 in Central Falls, RI. The son of a carpenter, he pulled his first con at around 14; telling store owners that a local businessman needed money, he started a collection on his behalf. The ruse earned him a larceny arrest and a trip to boarding school, but it didn’t deter him.

Hired several years later to dress in “Indian” attire for a Coney Island sideshow, he later reprised this role in Dr. W.H. Long’s Big Indian and Medicine Concert Company, a traveling road show that mixed vaudevillian entertainment with the selling of fake medical elixirs supposedly developed using old Indian wisdom.

The sham medicines faded away, but Laplante spent the rest of his life pulling scams by posing as fake and real Native Americans.

The pattern was pretty much always the same. He would appear in a town as his Native American alter ego, launch a massive charm offensive on the local intelligentsia and gain sudden acclaim until the news about his real identity landed from another locale, all within a week or so.

Sometimes he fled. Other times he landed in jail, but charges never stuck. Along the way, he picked up lovers (male and female) and indulged heavily in alcohol, cocaine and morphine.

In 1917, he appeared in San Jose, Calif., impersonating the real-life Native American marathon runner and war hero Tom Longboat.

Within days, Laplante had met and charmed the town’s most influential citizens. He spent time at the city’s prestigious yacht club with a local judge and was the guest of honor at San Diego’s Panama-California Exposition. He also gave speeches at local churches and civic organizations, collecting healthy speaking fees.

An article in the San Jose Evening News one week after he arrived called him out as a fraud. The paper had been contacted by a Toronto journalist who knew the real Tom Longboat, who was fighting in England.

After seeing the article, Laplante caught the 6:15 p.m. train that evening to Los Angeles and posed as Longboat there.

The ensuing weeks would also find him in Montana as Chief Harry Johnson, then in Eau Claire, Wis., as Chief Tewanna.

His Utah affair ended similarly, but with a wife in tow. Thompson was his unwitting accomplice for almost three years, until she could no longer tolerate his drug use. He wound up abandoning her and their child.

Ready for a new challenge, Laplante sailed to England in 1922. As Chief White Elk, he told the local papers he was there to appeal to King George V himself for greater rights for Indians and was granted a meeting with the royal. But as always, journalists soon discovered there was no Chief White Elk and the meeting was cancelled.

He eventually landed in Italy, where he endeared himself to the rising Fascist party by giving speeches on their behalf, hoping for a meeting with party leader Benito Mussolini. The meeting was granted, but then the press caught on, placing him in danger of angry fascists.

Laplante wound up in Italian custody for fraud after bilking a wealthy family out of their fortune. He spent 2¹/₂ years in prison, then returned to America, landing in Greenpoint, Brooklyn in 1929.

He gave interviews claiming to be a changed man, but in truth he continued scamming, with increasingly less success, until he died of a heart attack, destitute and virtually forgotten, in January 1944.

“I don’t think Edgar set out to hurt people,” says Willetts. “His scams were about his own rapid gratification. Money was a means of winning acclaim and status. Like a general who dismisses civilian deaths as mere ‘collateral damage,’ he thought nothing of bankrupting his admirers if their money would buy him the attention he craved.”