BUFFALO BILL CODY

DALE TIMOTHY WHITE

The buckskin roots of American myth

In the wake of 9/11, American popular culture has moved away from the smug post-modernism of the previous decade and toward more traditional images and archetypes. As we continue to celebrate the work of firefighters, police officers, and soldiers—our modern version of the cowboy hero—and the battle between good and evil is fought between clearly drawn lines, it may be useful to reflect on the roots of robust national myths that again have become fashionable. Surely some of them extend from an American showman who, if remembered at all, is often cast as a drunk and a fraud. But our sense of the American West and the values it embodied is to a large degree authored by a man who lived and presented it authentically: Buffalo Bill.

A hundred years ago, Buffalo Bill Cody was arguably the most famous man in the world. For three decades, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West was the very definition of popular, mass entertainment, thrilling millions across America and Europe. Cody was portrayed in scores of books and in no fewer than 27 feature films, his character played by actors like Roy Rogers, Charlton Heston, and Paul Newman, and on several occasions by Cody himself. More than an historical curiosity, Buffalo Bill should be remembered as a seminal figure whose influence endures today.

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

William Frederick Cody was born in a log cabin near LeClaire, Iowa, on February 22, 1846, the second son of Isaac and Mary Ann Cody. Isaac Cody, a frontier abolitionist deeply involved in the Free Soil Movement, was stabbed by a political opponent and died in 1857. Billy’s older brother had died in an accident three years earlier and, at age 11, the boy became principal breadwinner for his mother, three sisters, and a younger brother. He was a strong youth, large for his age, with handsome features and a mop of brown hair. He already was considered a fine horseman and crack shot.

Billy Cody was hired on as a bull-whacker for wagon trains, and thus began several years of riding and shooting and hanging around cavalry posts and stage stops.At the tender age of 14, he set the record for the thirdlongest Pony Express leg, riding 321 miles in less than 22 hours. Young Cody, known alternately as Will, Billy, or Bill, spent the next couple of years guiding and scouting for anyone who needed a gregarious young man who knew how to handle horses, guns, and people.

When the Civil War reached the border states, Cody was hired several times to help move Union troops around Kansas and Missouri. After his mother died in November 1863, he joined the Union Army. By his own report, he awoke one morning after “a night of bad whiskey” and found himself a member of the Seventh Kansas Regiment.

At war’s end, Bill Cody, 19 and ruggedly handsome, met and married Louisa “Lulu” Frederici. She was attractive, a bit older than Cody, and citified. None too fond of Cody’s cowboy friends or frontier ways, Lulu chose to stay home in Nebraska while her husband traveled the world. He faithfully sent money back to the growing family, instructing his wife to buy certain properties and make other investments. Years later, Buffalo Bill would learn that Lulu had put all of the assets in her name, not his. When financial problems bore down on him, he owned not even his own house.

Buffalo Bill as the hero of theater and dime novels (circa 1874).

While the marriage endured, their mutual civility did not. In a very public divorce hearing in 1905, Cody accused Louisa of being rude to his guests and of trying to poison him—twice! She accused him of carrying on affairs, including one with Queen Victoria. The judge threw out the case and refused to grant a divorce.

In the early days of his marriage, Cody tried his hand at innkeeping in Grasshopper Falls, Kansas. Within six months, he was back on horseback guiding wagon trains, scouting for the Army, and pursuing various business schemes. In 1867, the Kansas Pacific Railroad hired him to supply buffalo meat for the thousands of workers laying track across the plains. By the time the contract ended the following year, Cody had killed 4,280 buffalo. Railroad station stops and waiting rooms were adorned with mounted buffalo heads. The sobriquet “Buffalo Bill” began to be heard around the country.

THE MAKING OF A LEGEND

Around this time, Cody met Edward Zane Carroll Judson, a Union army veteran, temperance lecturer, and bigamist who had once been jailed for inciting a riot in New York. Judson, who wrote under the pseudonym Ned Buntline, was also a prolific author of dime novels —inexpensive mass-produced stories with simple plots and florid prose.Western and frontier adventures, the characters always larger than life, were especially popular among Civil War soldiers, immigrants fresh off the boat, and wagon train pioneers, who traded them back and forth on the long journey westward.

In 1869, Buntline churned out Buffalo Bill, the King of the Border Men. The story featured Cody as a Western hero who fought Indians and bandits, supported his friends and honored his mother, and rode and shot in the name of justice. Several scenarios were lifted directly from earlier stories featuring Wild Bill Hickock, a friend of Cody’s, but the readers didn’t seem to mind. Over the years, dozens of dime novels featuring Buffalo Bill would hit the market, written by various authors, including Cody himself. Although some believe all of Cody’s titles were ghostwritten, his sister Helen maintained that Bill labored hard on his prose style despite his remarkably limited formal schooling.

The success of the Buffalo Bill novels led Buntline to turn Buffalo Bill, the King of the Border Men into a stage play of the same name. In 1872, Cody traveled to New York and attended opening night of the play at the Bowery Theater.When the audience learned the real Buffalo Bill was in the house, the cheering and whooping went on until Cody made his way to the stage to say a few words.

Buntline attempted to persuade Bill to stay on and play himself in subsequent performances of the play, but Cody slipped back West, leaving audiences and New York newspaper columnists swooning over the new, authentic Western hero. Later that year, Buntline succeeded in getting Cody to star in Scouts of the Prairie, which opened in Chicago to less-than-kind reviews. Audiences loved the play nevertheless, and jumped at the chance to see Buffalo Bill in person. Other melodramas followed, with Cody playing himself from Broadway to St. Louis, and always to packed and enthusiastic houses.

William F. Cody’s blossoming stage career was a winter-time vocation. Once spring returned, he was back in the West scouting for the US Army, where frontier commander Philip Sheridan was a great friend and supporter. In the early 1870s, the Indian wars were becoming increasingly bloody, and Cody’s scouting skills were much in demand. He engaged in many skirmishes with Plains Indians and was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor after a battle at Loup River, Nebraska, in April 1872.

In the summer of 1876, Buffalo Bill was chief of scouts for the 5th Cavalry as his friend George Armstrong Custer led the 7th Cavalry to its doom at Little Big Horn. Several officers commented at the time that had Cody been scouting for the 7th, the massacre would have been avoided.

Shortly after Little Big Horn, Buffalo Bill found himself in a face-to-face gun duel with Chief Yellow Hand of the Sioux tribe.Cody killed Yellow Hand and scalped him on the spot—holding aloft the dead warrior’s bloody top-knot and crying out “The first scalp for Custer!” Newspapers across the country carried the story, adding further luster to Cody’s growing fame. The killing and scalping of Yellow Hand later was reenacted in the Wild West, though Cody dropped it from the show after two seasons. Later, he said he regretted the scalping incident.

Years later, the Wild West often featured Cody’s dramatic reenactment of Custer’s Last Stand, which always ended with Buffalo Bill galloping up after the last soldier had fallen. A large sign was unfurled that proclaimed “TOO LATE.” In fact, Cody was hundreds of miles away from Little Big Horn when Custer met his fate.

In 1879, at age 32, Buffalo Bill published his autobiography. The hunting, scouting, Indian fights, Civil War adventures, novels, and plays; the friendships with Sheridan, Hickock, and Custer—it was all there in a somewhat labored prose that Cody composed at least partly on his own. The book, published by the same company that published Mark Twain’s works, was immediately popular across America.

THE WILD WEST

In 1882, Cody produced a July 4th “Old Glory Blowout” in his adopted home town of North Platte, Nebraska. The extravaganza featured riding, roping, and shooting exhibitions; a staged buffalo hunt; Indians and cowboys racing on horseback; wagon races; fireworks; and other feats. It was part patriotism, part show business, part rodeo, part circus, and all fun. The “Blowout” was a popular and financial success, and Cody the entrepreneur saw an opportunity to take his show across America. Circuses and outdoor shows had been playing round the country for many years, but there was nothing like the authentic experience Cody intended to offer his audiences. Over the next year, Cody gathered together a number of financial partners and colleagues for the venture. Among them were Nate Salsbury, whose talent with money and management would counter Cody’s extravagance; and Major John Burke, the best press agent and publicity man of his day.

Buffalo Bill’s Wild West opened in Omaha on May 19, 1883. Significantly, it was never called the Wild West “Show” because Cody’s goal was to transpose frontier reality into an entertaining educational experience. Audiences flocked to the huge canvas arena, and the next day the newspapers were hailing “Cody’s Cyclone.” The Wild West was presented as a series of acts and exhibits, including a Pony Express reenactment; a cowboy, Mexican, and Indian racing; a race between an Indian pony and an Indian on foot; and a reenactment of the hold-up of the Deadwood Stage. There were also individual acts like Master Johnny Baker, the Cowboy Kid; and Miss Annie Oakley, the Ohio farm girl billed as “Champion Lady Shot.”

For all the variety and stars the Wild West offered, the main attraction was always Cody himself. In the years that followed, he took part in virtually every performance. His fame was such that posters would appear in a town in advance of the Wild West, showing only his picture imposed on a charging buffalo; beneath it were just two words: I’M COMING!

The Wild West played the width and breadth of America. The logistical challenges of moving the show around the country were daunting. It required exceptional management and three trains to transport nearly 500 people; scores of horses, buffalo, and elk; mountains of canvas; kegs of gunpowder; and all sorts of other supplies. Cody’s first concern, though, was always his audience. The show often would perform free of charge in prisons, and no poor child was ever turned away from the gate.

His fame spreading outside the United States through international press accounts and translations of dime novels, Cody and his entourage sailed for Europe in 1887. In addition to the buffalo, elk, steer, horses, tents, and the Deadwood Stage, Cody also had along 97 Indians, who became so seasick on the voyage that they began to perform the Sioux death chant. In London, Cody’s troupe performed for Queen Victoria, and the European press was in rapture over these authentic Americans.

Years later, the Wild West often featured Cody’s dramatic re-enactment of Custer’s Last Stand, which always ended with Buffalo Bill galloping up after the last soldier had fallen. A large sign was unfurled that proclaimed “TOO LATE.”

Back home, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West continued its performances until 1912, reaching an estimated 50 million people throughout the years. Its star was aging, slowing, and burdened by debt. In the new century, the advent of automobiles, motion pictures, and a new generation for whom the “real West” seemed merely the distant past meant smaller crowds, and audiences drawn more by nostalgia than excitement. To meet his ever-deepening debts, Cody took a $20,000 loan from a scurrilous Denver promoter and newspaperman named Harry Tammen.When the Wild West arrived in Denver, Tammen foreclosed, the sheriff seized the show, and the assets were auctioned off.

A stunned Buffalo Bill suddenly found himself a marquee performer in the Sells-Floto Circus, a Tammen production. Cody was crushed in body and spirit, but carried on. In his last days, racked with pain, his kidneys failing, he would be helped on his horse and would gallop around the Big Top waving his white hat.William F.Cody died at his sister’s home in Denver on January 10, 1917, deeply in debt, but surrounded by friends and family.

HARSH TREATMENT

After his death, Cody’s critics descended on his reputation like buzzards to a hunting ground. The indictments were pointed: Buffalo Bill was a fraud and a racist. He was accused of slaughtering buffalo to near extinction. He was castigated as a drunkard and dismissed as a terrible businessman.

To be sure, the authenticity of Cody’s exploits was often difficult to verify during his lifetime. Between his publicist, the dime novels, and his own readiness to tell a tale, it’s not hard to imagine that Buffalo Bill was pure confection. It was well into the 20th century, after the papers of eyewitnesses and frontier generals like Philip Sheridan and Nelson Miles were studied, that the true nature of William Cody’s life became known. While there may have been some confusion on dates and names—and some convenient “talling of tales”—the record shows that Cody was indeed an extraordinary guide, scout, and Indian fighter.

Those who would criticize him as racist and hostile toward Indians should consider his relationships in the context of his times. Contemporary Native American scholar Vine Deloria notes that Buffalo Bill’s relationship with Indians was more enlightened than prevailing attitudes of the late 19th century. In fact, Cody often spoke and wrote of his respect and sympathy for the American Indian. To a civic gathering in Philadelphia he said

I have known the redman ... since I was a baby, I have known him on the warpath and in peace, and I have known him to be always honorable in peace and war....They drove the Indian to the reservation ... to land that was thought only to be good for the rattlesnake and the coyote, and he couldn’t even stay there when the white man found that his land was useful.

I have served under 32 different generals as a scout and guide, and I never pointed a gun at an Indian, that I did not feel in my heart a profound and sincere regret.

The great Chief Sitting Bull trusted Cody enough to travel with the Wild West for a full season, and the Indian players in the show always were paid fairly and on time. When Cody learned one day that the Indians were being fed leftover pancakes for breakfast, he publicly dressed down the cookhouse manager and told him the Indians would eat like everyone else. When Cody discovered that the Indians players were being given the wildest horses to ride during the show, he ordered that the next night those horses be ridden by the cowboys.

The frequent criticism of Cody by missionaries and government Indian agents likely stemmed from his support for preserving native culture. Performances of the Wild West featured the Ghost Dance, War Dance, Corn Dance, and other tribal rituals that the government was trying to suppress or outlaw.

On the matter of the buffalo, there is no question that the great herds of American bison vanished to the point of extinction between 1870 and 1883. Nearly four million were slaughtered in three years alone, and the great southern herd ceased to exist by 1875.According to Don Russell, a western historian and Cody biographer, the hide hunters were largely responsible for the wholesale destruction. Buffalo leather and fur had become wildly popular on the East Coast and in Europe, and a buffalo hide could fetch $1.25 on the open market. Cody himself wrote an article titled The Buffalo: Who has Slain Them by the Tens of Thousands? and answered his own question: “The death knell of the buffaloes sounded when white men got to killing them for their hides, simply to make leather...and leaving the carcasses by the hundreds of thousands to rot on the plains.”

That Buffalo Bill had a taste for whiskey is incontestable. His autobiography admits that he started drinking around the age of 14. Alcohol figures into many of his exploits and adventures, as it did for most hard-living frontiersmen. But his performance record shows that drinking didn’t interfere with his work. Press reports from the 1887 European tour, in fact, remark on Cody’s abstinence. In his later years,with his health beginning to fail, he drank only lemonade.

On the question of Cody’s business acumen, it’s true he made and spent millions over his lifetime. His generosity was legend. Much of his intermittent fortune was loaned, given away, or sunk into dead-end investments with friends. In addition to the Wild West, Cody at one time or another owned or promoted the Cody Coal Company, the Campo Bonito Mining and Milling Company, the Shoshone Irrigation Company, the Multiple Railway System, a handful of hotels, and various medicinal products.

At one point, his loyal and long-suffering business manager Nate Salsbury wrote that he had looked into Cody’s financial interests in Wyoming’s Big Horn Basin and told him, “It turned my stomach.” Cody replied that rather than pile up dollars, he would prefer to be remembered as someone who had helped humanity and been good to his friends and family. His hope was in large part realized, as Cody died deeply in debt—and the nation deeply mourned his passing.

THE LEGEND LIVES ON

Buffalo Bill’s legacy is with us still. Before Hollywood Westerns, before the defining scholarship of Frederick Jackson Turner, before television cowboys, Cody’s Wild West created a national memory of the American frontier experience. Few of the millions who thrilled to the drama of Indians and animals, heroes and villains, and perils and rescues had any first-hand experience with that brief, colorful period in American history. Yet because Cody’s exhibition was cut from authentic cloth, with real characters reenacting real events, generations of Americans felt they had participated in the opening of the frontier. Cody himself embodied the virtues that defined the heroic frontier scout: courage; optimism; the triumph of man over nature; and the inevitability of Western civilization over savagery.

Where Cody’s friend Mark Twain was an observer of the West, Cody was a direct participant. Another prominent friend exalted in the drama, values, and virtues played out in the Wild West, and borrowed from it the name “Rough Riders” for the troops he would lead up San Juan Hill. Theodore Roosevelt visited with Cody in Wyoming, and the old showman lunched with the President at the White House.

Beyond his personal reach, Cody’s Wild West helped frame how America saw itself in the world. His orchestrated mythology of good over evil and of galloping to the rescue echoed through the 20th century. It can be seen in the expansionism of Theodore Roosevelt, American engagement in both World Wars, the decadeslong confrontation with Communism, and even in Lyndon Johnson’s vain hope that just a few more troops around the wagon train might carry the day in Vietnam. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan, a canny performer himself, used Western stagecraft and metaphor to help revive America’s sense of righteous determination.

The current war against terrorism is a new frontier, as rugged and dangerous as any in the Old West. It is significant that Cody, the decorated Indian fighter, made clear distinctions between the warriors he fought and the culture from which they came. When the shooting stopped, he befriended Sitting Bull. In later years he spoke out on behalf of Native Americans. Likewise, we are assured that the war today is waged against a radical few, not Islam or Arabs.We drop food along with bombs. Yet we thrill to images in The New York Times of American Special Forces in Afghan native dress, galloping on horseback across the open plains on the far side of the world.

The metaphors and archetypes through which America defines itself in the modern world flow from many sources.Among them must be counted the buckskinned scout who, for generations, defined the spirit of the Wild West.

Dale Timothy White (CC ’92) is a television journalist and the producer of biographical documentaries on Margaret Mead, Leonard Bernstein, I.M. Pei, John Hope Franklin, and others. His reporting assignments have included Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Asia. He enjoys summers at his family home in Cody, Wyoming.

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