Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

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Famous People Column – An open Column for all writers

September 14, 2007

The life of Buffalo Bill Cody closely parallels the growth of the western lands he loved and was such a part of.

William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody was born in LeClaire, Iowa in 1846, young Bill watched the wagon trains heading west, seeking land in Kansas and gold in California.  At the age of eleven, his family moved to Leavenworth, Kansas.  William F. Cody was head of the family which included three sisters and his widowed mother.  To support them, he signed on with a wagon train as its messenger.  His salary was $40 a month; and in his spare time along the wagon route, he taught himself to read and write.  The train went through Fort Laramie, a wild, western metropolis where the boy glimpsed lifelong heroes such as Jim Bridger and the incomparable Kit Carson.  From that time on, Cody knew that he, too, would be a marksman and a scout.

In spring of 1859 Buffalo Bill made his first trip to Colorado as part of the Pikes Peak Gold Rush. He passed through the new town of Denver on his way to the gold fields near Black Hawk where he searched for gold for two months, meeting with little success. On his return to Kansas he stopped in Julesburg, Colorado, where he was recruited to ride in the Pony Express in 1860; but with the outbreak of the Civil War, he enlisted as a Union soldier (Like his father before him, he was a strident abolitionist.)  While serving as a hospital orderly, Cody met Louisa Frederici whom he married on March 6, 1866.  At twenty years of age, the bridegroom spotted the long, flowing locks of a scout and the flamboyant and fringed western garb.    

After a brief, unsuccessful stint as an innkeeper, which he attempted mainly to please his wife, Cody signed on as a scout for General Custer.

Cody’s life in the West offered the stuff from which legends were made and he soon was popularized in newspaper accounts and dime novels.
In the meantime he also dabbled in real estate speculation, Indian fighting, and guiding eastern visitors looking for buffalo.  One distinguished easterner who came west was James Gordon Bennett of the New York Herald.  Bennett found Cody charming and carried tales back home of the wonderful scout.  Another prestigious hunter was the Grand Duke Alexis of Russia.  Out of gratitude to his guide, the Grand Duke awarded Bill a diamond-entrusted tie tack.  Such recognition boosted Bill’s growing reputation as the personification of the Wild West and earned him the nickname Buffalo Bill, which he used for the rest of his life.  It is said that, while serving as a scout and a guide, Bill shot over 4000 buffalo.

Capitalizing on Cody’s growing fame, a man named Ned Buntline wrote a series of Buffalo stories.  One of them was dramatized and Bill went to the play’s opening in New York.  The rather melodramatic, overacted play was well received; but when the crowds spotted the actual Buffalo Bill in the audience, they went wild with applause.  Thus, his new career, as one of America’s most famous showmen, was launched.

Based on this initial success, Buntline conceived the idea of writing a play about Buffalo Bill, starring the real Cody.  This play, Scouts of the Plains, was a drama created by dime novelist Ned Buntline, who appeared in it with Cody and another well-known scout, "Texas Jack" Omohundro, was a smash hit.  Buffalo Bill’s show business career began on December 17, 1872 in Chicago; he was age twenty-six.  After a bout of stage fright, Bill, with his natural grace and innate acting ability, performed well.  The show was a success, despite one critic’s characterization of Cody as "a good-looking fellow, tall and straight as an arrow, but ridiculous as an actor." Other critics noted Cody’s manner of charming the audience and the realism he brought to his performance. Actor or not, Buffalo Bill was a showman.

The following season Cody organized his own troupe, the Buffalo Bill Combination. The troupe’ shows "Scouts of the Plains" included Buffalo Bill, Texas Jack and Cody’s old friend "Wild Bill" Hickok. Wild Bill and Texas Jack eventually left the show, but Cody continued staging a variety of plays until 1882. That year the Wild West show was conceived. It was an outdoor spectacle, designed to both educate and entertain, using a cast of hundreds as well as live buffalo, elk, cattle, and other animals.

Bill’s dream, however, was to stage a real extravaganza---a show as big as the west.  He wanted to give eastern folks a taste of what life in the wild was like.   "Buffalo Bill’s Wild West" used real cow-boys and cow-girls, recruited from ranches in the West. At first, few people shared Cody's admiration of the cow-boys. Most people regarded them as coarse cattle drivers and used the term "cow-boy" as an insult. By the end of the 19th century, the cow-boy became the much more popular "cowboy," thanks in large part to the Buffalo Bill Wild West shows. The shows demonstrated bronco riding, roping, and other skills that would later become part of public rodeos.

At first, he advanced toward his goal by working animals and Indians into the same shows.  But as his idea crystallized, it developed into a full-blown Wild West Show, with buffalo, Indians, great feats of horsemanship and marksmanship, and stars such as the incomparable Annie Oakley (nicknamed Little Sure Shot by Sitting Bull);  and Sitting Bull, chief of the tribe which vanquished Custer. Buffalo Bill had a great love and concern for people, particularly children. Many free passes were distributed to orphanages when the Wild West show came to town. He also was a champion of women’s rights, advocating equal pay and voting rights for women. The women in his show received comparable pay for comparable work to the men in the show. In fact, the women in the Wild West often out-rode and out-gunned the men.    “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show” was the first of its kind; and it was such a success that it eventually toured the whole country and Europe.

The Wild West was invited to England in 1887 to be the main American contribution to Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee celebration. "Buffalo Bill’s Wild West" was the hit of the celebration, visited by nobility, commoners, and by Queen Victoria herself. The show was credited with improving British and American relations. "Buffalo Bill’s Wild West" rose to international fame and returned two years later to tour the European Continent.

In addition to performing, Buffalo Bill had business dealings in Denver. In 1911 Cody acquired some horse halters from the Gates Tire and Leather Company in Denver. He liked them so well that he provided an endorsement for the product. This gave the fledgling firm such a boost in sales that it became the largest halter manufacturing firm in the U.S. It eventually became Gates Rubber Company.

In 1912 Buffalo Bill needed financing for his show and went to Harry Tammen of Denver for a $20,000 loan. In 1908 he had combined his show with Pawnee Bill’s under the title Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Pawnee Bill’s Far East. In 1913 the combined show arrived for a Denver performance date at the time the $20,000 loan was due. To their surprise the show was seized by the sheriff’s and held to pay off the $20,000 debt. Since Cody did not have that much cash available at the time and Tammen would not extend the loan, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Pawnee Bill’s Far East was sold off at auction in Denver. Continuing to use the debt as leverage, Tammen then forced Buffalo Bill to appear in Tammen’s Sells-Floto circus. It was clear that had been his objective all along. In 1915, Buffalo Bill finally got out of his coerced agreement with Tammen.

Buffalo Bill never retired, even though he had hoped to do so. He did two years of farewell performances while his show was combined with Pawnee Bill’s in 1908 but discovered at the end of the second year that he could not retire. Growing personal debts due to bad investments left him with little to retire on. Even after Cody left the Sells-Floto circus, his financial situation kept him performing with other Wild West shows.

Today there is a lot of confusion about the relationship between Buffalo Bill and the Indians. Cody treated his former foes with great respect and dignity, giving them an opportunity to leave the reservation and represent their culture when many were trying to destroy it. Wild West show posters frequently portrayed the Indian as "The American." Buffalo Bill stated in 1885 that "The defeat of Custer was not a massacre. The Indians were being pursued by skilled fighters with orders to kill. For centuries they had been hounded from the Atlantic to the Pacific and back again. They had their wives and little ones to protect and they were fighting for their existence." These are not the words of an arrogant and bloodthirsty Indian killer, a manner in which he is sometime incorrectly portrayed.

In 1917 Buffalo Bill died while visiting his sister’s home in Denver. According to his wife Louisa it was his choice that he be buried on Lookout Mountain overlooking Denver and the Plains. Despite the claims of the citizens of Cody, Wyoming that he really wanted to be buried near Cody, close friends like Goldie Griffith and Johnny Baker, as well as the priest who administered last rites, affirmed that Lookout Mountain was indeed his choice. On June 3, 1917, Buffalo Bill was buried on Lookout Mountain, a promontory with spectacular views of both the mountains and plains, places where he had spent the happiest times of his life.

Louisa, who had married Buffalo Bill back before he became famous, was buried next to her husband four years later. That year, 1921, the Buffalo Bill Memorial Museum was begun by Johnny Baker, close friend and unofficial foster son to Buffalo Bill. Just as millions of people saw Buffalo Bill in his Wild West shows during his life, millions of persons have visited Buffalo Bill’s grave in the years since 1917. Today it is one of the top visitor attractions in Denver and Colorado.

Hartson S. Dowd

hsdowd@telus.net