By 1872, William Frederick Cody, known as Buffalo Bill, had served in the Pony Express
at 14, fought in the Civil War, and killed over 4,000 buffalo. Meeting dime-novel author
Edward Judson took him on his next adventure: building perhaps the most-famous Wild West
show of all time.
Cody was a natural showman, taking his inspiration not only from the, quote, “flamboyant theatrical
clothes” he actually wore on campaign with General Custer in 1876, but also from Judson,
who by the 1870s had already published gripping stories of Buffalo Bill under the pen name
Ned Buntline. Needing a partner to get his show into production, Cody teamed up with
dentist sharpshooter Dr. W. F. Carver.
But, as HistoryNet relates, the show’s opening season didn’t quite grab audiences as expected.
Buffalo Bill needed more star power, and in 1885 he got it by making two key hires. One
was Sitting Bull, crucial in Custer’s defeat at the Battle of Little Bighorn. The other
was expert markswoman Annie Oakley, nicknamed "Little Sure Shot" by Sitting Bull. Over time,
the production would bring in more than 1,200 performers.
"He was a star because Buntline made him a star, and the half-dimes and the world made
him a star. And that was pioneer stuff."
Cody’s Wild West show became renowned for numerous reenactments, including buffalo hunts,
battles, stagecoach robberies, and train robberies. In maximizing the entertainment value of these
scenes, however, authenticity sometimes took a back seat. PBS submits that although notable
individuals like General William Tecumseh Sherman, Mark Twain, and General Custer’s
wife Elizabeth felt the performances were historically accurate, that wasn't always
the case. Famous battle scenes like the one at Little Bighorn left out the fact that Native
American women and children were killed in the fighting.
But audiences loved the show. According to the website Legends of America, by 1900,
“[Cody] was probably the most famous American in the world."
By the late 1890s, the show’s cast numbered around 500, according to the Buffalo Bill
Center of the West – a cast that included cowboys, Native Americans, women, children,
horses, and buffalos.
Granted, it took a lot of performers to put on the show; several period photographs aptly
illustrated the numerous cast members involved. In addition to performers, a University of
Virginia researcher has revealed the show’s large crew of, quote, "stagehands and laborers"
handling the massive sets used for each performance.
But the number of cast members varied from year to year. In 1887, for example, HistoryNet
mentions the entourage included 100 white and 97 Native-American cast members, as well
as over 200 horses when the show went to England. That was roughly half the staff Cody had in
America when his show was left out of Chicago's Columbian Exposition in 1893 for being, quote,
"too vulgar." The determined showman simply set up across the street from the expo instead;
taking up 14 acres that included a campground for 200 cowboys of mixed heritage, international
troops, and 450 horses.
Some of the Native Americans in Cody’s show, according to PBS, had actually been at the
Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876—which became a major set piece for the Wild West Show along
with other historical Wild West battles. Casting the Native Americans as the evil enemies,
unfortunately, enhanced some stereotypes, such as scalping, and the belief that Native
Americans were wrong to defend their land at Little Bighorn even though it had been
given to them by the American government.
According to that view, it seemed Cody was exploiting his Native-American performers,
and Legends of America confirms that Cody himself often played a part in the victorious
army during reenactments of battles the Native Americans lost. But Cody the showman believed
that he was doing the right thing by employing the tribespeople. Their work with his show
helped them retain their language and customs and receive an income they never would have
had otherwise. Cody also tried to sway public opinion towards the Natives by promoting them
as, quote, "The Former Foe—Present Friend, the American.”
According to Center of the West, the show included other non-white performers along
with the Native-American cast members, making for an ethnically diverse mix on set. One
of them, Voter Hall, a cowboy performer in 1885, apparently had a Fijian background.
By 1892, Cody had a partner named Nate Salsbury, who came up with the idea for the show’s,
quote, "Congress of Rough Riders of the World," a multiethnic performance that included cowboys
from Cuba, Hawaii, Japan, and the Philippines. Writer Kathryn White commented that
“[The performance was] a drawing table for American identity."
As Cody realized how important Mexican vaqueros were to the West's development, he began including
them in the Congress of Rough Riders performance along with other nationalities. By 1894, the
show also featured, quote, "Cossacks, gauchos, Arabs," as well as soldiers from Russia, cuirassiers
from Germany, and men from the Pacific Islands. Together, these performers made a complete,
if somewhat idealized, representation of the cowboys and soldiers who roamed the West.
The practice of hiring famous people to influence one's brand goes back a long way, including
to the days of Buffalo Bill's Wild West. And Cody took part in that long tradition of hiring
celebrities to grab audiences. Even before the show made its first premiere, back in
the 1870s William Cody was performing with his friend, James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok,
who originally served as Cody's mentor. By the time Cody formed his Wild West show, he
knew that he needed big names to get the big crowds.
Buffalo Bill’s celebrity hires included not just Annie Oakley and Sitting Bull, but
others as well. Iron Tail, an Oglala Lakota, later served as a model for the, quote, "Indian
head nickel." There also was fellow showman Gordon William "Pawnee Bill" Lillie, who later
formed his own Wild West show, and William Levi "Buck" Taylor, whom Arizona historian
Marshall Trimble calls, quote, "the Original King of the Cowboys." Indian Country Today
also mentions another Oglala Lakota, Red Cloud, who had appealed to the plight of his people
in Washington, D.C., and who appeared in the show in 1897.
In 1886, according to the book Buffalo Bill in Bologna, Cody’s partner Nate Salsbury
had negotiated for an official invitation from the London American Exhibition for the
show to perform there in 1887. Buffalo Bill jumped at the opportunity, sailing to England
aboard the State of Nebraska with over 130 crew members and nearly 220 livestock. Two
months later, the show premiered to rave reviews, with the Illustrated London News proclaiming,
"It is new, it is brilliant, it will 'go'!"
Among those attending the premiere was the Prince of Wales—the son of Queen Victoria.
Her Majesty soon requested and got Cody to give a private performance at Windsor Palace,
in honor of the Queen’s Golden Jubilee. Britannica relates that Cody was happy to
comply with this request from a ruler known as "Grandmother England." The day was indeed
grand, and the Prince of Wales even rode in a stagecoach with Cody as he pretended to
fight off Native attackers.One of the performers, Black Elk, would remember the performance
fondly, with the Queen talking and shaking hands with himself and several other cast
members. She was so kind that Black Elk later reflected,
"Maybe if she had been our Grandmother, it would have been better for our people."
Lugging the show’s hundreds of performers and animals along with large sets across the
US became easier in 1895, when, as mentioned in the Journal Star, James Bailey of the Barnum
and Bailey Circus partnered with Cody to use two official trains for transportation. Each
train had 50 cars, including large stoves and sleeping quarters to feed and house the
crew, who stayed in tents when the traveling show stopped in any given town. By 1908, according
to Center of the West, the show had 780 mouths to feed, with food purchased on site.
During 1899 alone, Buffalo Bill's Wild West performed 341 shows in 132 cities, traveling
a total of 11,000 miles. Performers were rarely given a chance to settle in for the next show
upon arrival. WXPR says that in 1900, the trains no sooner pulled into Rhinelander,
Wisconsin than performers disembarked behind William Cody, who led a parade around the
downtown area on his horse. Following each performance, the mess wagon would move on
to the next town as the show props were disassembled and loaded for transport.
The book Buffalo Bill on the Silver Screen confirms that Thomas Edison, who developed
the first modern motion-picture camera, invited Cody to bring a few of his performers out
to New Jersey, to be captured on film for the very first time. The end results were
shorts under the titles Bucking Broncos, with cowboy Lee Martin, Sioux Ghost Dance, featuring
Native-American performers, and footage of Annie Oakley shooting at various targets.
These early collections of scenes made Buffalo Bill even more of a star.
More films would follow, with Blackhawk Films producing footage that was shot in 1898, 1902,
and 1910, which was when Pawnee Bill purchased James Bailey’s share in the show. Cody found
film quite useful as it enabled him to promote his shows, demonstrate his respect for the
Natives, and capture such epic moments as a meeting with Prince Albert of Monaco. Even
after his show ended in 1913, according to University of Oklahoma Press, Cody got fully
behind the budding film industry as a way to enhance his performance value, hoping to
record the American west's history as he knew it on film.
Early on, Buffalo Bill's Wild West nearly went broke with the collision of two ships
on the Mississippi River in 1883—one of which was transporting Cody's troupe. The
Denver Library details that the entire cast and crew were on the steamship W.P. Thompson
when it collided with another ship and promptly sank. Nobody died, but the incident cost Cody
some $20,000. Next, terrible weather hampered three months' worth of shows, putting Cody
in the hole for another $60,000. By 1888, the show was back on its feet, but then Antonio
Esquivel, a Mexican cowboy employed as a crew member, was accidentally shot in the face,
as the William F. Cody Archive relates. Esquivel lost sight in one eye as doctors worked to
save the other eye. He was, thankfully, able to stay with the show.
But the show had other serious travails. According to HistoryNet, officials became concerned
about Sitting Bull, who had left the show and had gotten involved in the Ghost Dance
movement, which the government felt had the potential to inflame passions again in the
West. Although Cody allegedly tried to quell the fuss, Indian agent James McLaughlin tracked
down Sitting Bull in 1890 and actually killed him.
Eleven years later, the show was traveling from North Carolina when one of its trains
collided with another train. Our State reports that the number of horses and other show animals
that perished was in the hundreds, and several performers were hurt including Annie Oakley,
who was so severely injured that she eventually had to leave the show.
The 1901 train crash of Buffalo Bill's Wild West was the beginning of its end. Although
the show was filmed several times between 1902 and as late as 1910, Wild West shooting
spectacles lost their popularity in favor of baseball and football, according to the
Center of the West. The allure of professional rodeos was also taking hold, as the excitement
of the "Old West" faded. Also, there were now dozens of other Wild West shows, including
that of Pawnee Bill, with whom Cody partnered in 1908.
"Ladies and gentlemen, the show which you have seen has lived a long time."
But Buffalo Bill's Wild West was officially bankrupt by July 1913. Cody turned to making
films, but Our Press recounts that his first endeavor, The Indian Wars, didn’t make enough
money to be considered a commercial success, and only a few minutes of footage from the
movie survive. Four years later, Cody died in Denver. He was 70 years old. Today, visitors
can see his grave in nearby Golden. Elsewhere, two museums - Buffalo Bill's Boyhood Home
in Wyoming (which was moved from its original location in Iowa) and the Buffalo Bill Cody
Homestead in Scott County, Iowa - give insight into Cody's childhood. And in Nebraska, Buffalo
Bill State Historical Park preserves Cody's 1886 mansion - the last testaments to a showman
who was once among the most famous people on Earth.
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