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William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody
February 26, 1846—January 10, 1917
As a child when I played “Cowboys and Indians”, more than often, I envisioned myself as Buffalo Bill, shooting buffalo and fighting Indians. Why? Because he was the hero of movies and television of my youth. But, he had also been a hero of many children’s youth in America and around the world for decades before his death until my childhood in the 1950s. Buffalo Bill combined many of the personas that we think of today as the Western heroes. He, at various times, was a Pony Express rider, big game hunter, Civil War soldier, Wagon Master, stagecoach driver, gold prospector, US cavalry scout/ Indian fighter, and Medal of Honor winner. He was one of the most famous characters of his time, but not only because of the things he did—many at the time could claim similar exploits—but because his last career move was into show business, where he tapped into a need of the public for heroes and heroic acts in the rapidly ending frontier of the West. He was the originator of the image we have today of the “Wild West” and the showman who started it all—without Buffalo Bill and his wild west shows, the western-themed movies and television shows that came later may not have come at all.
William Frederick Cody was born February 26, 1846, in the Iowa territory to Isaac and Mary Ann Cody. After the death of his older brother in a horse ridng accident around1853, the Codys moved to Kansas where they lived in a Log Cabin. In Kansas, William’s father became a vocal critic of slavery which brought considerable oposition from neighboring proslavery elements. Isaac was attacked by a mob and stabbed while speaking out against slavery at a political gathering and was pulled to safety by his son, William. Isaac never fully recovered from the wound and he died eventually in 1857 from complications, leaving his family in financial trouble.
After his father’s death, William left home at age eleven to help ease the family’s financial woes. He enlisted as a helper for the mule skinners traveling with Johnston’s army to put down a supposed Mormon Rebellion in the Utah Territory. During this trip He claimed that he had his first experience fighting Indians, felling an Indian warrior in Indian’s attempt to attack one of Cody’s fellows in the traveling company.
At 14 years of age, he gravitated to the gold fields of Colorado, but accepted a job as a pony express rider instead. When the Civil War began, young Cody tried to enlist, but because of his age he could only aquire work as a freight driver, taking supplies to outposts in the Wyoming Territory. In 1963, after his mother’s death, he was able to enlist in the 7th Kansas Cavalry and he served there for the remainder of the war.
After the war, Cody met and married Louisa Frederici, with whom he had four chidren. Two of his children died in early child hood and Cody’s marriage seemed to suffer for his dissapointment in his children’s deaths and his desire to follow a carreer as a hunter and Indian scout. Between 1868 and 1872, Cody divided his time between working as a scout for the US Cavalry and hunting buffalo to feed the workers for the Kansas Pacific Railroad. It was during an 18 month stretch as a buffalo hunter, where he killed 4,280 of the beasts, that he earned the name, “Buffalo Bill.” For “gallantry in action” during a battle with Inians, while serving with the 3rd US Cavalry in 1872, Cody received the Congressional Medal of Honor.
If he had ended his exploits then an there, he would have enjoyed significant notoriety in his time and earned a footnote in history, but with the help of friends and supporters in the East, including Ned Buntline, the dime novel writer, Buffalo Bill was able to parley his colorful life into a New York Broadway Show, and later into a traveling Wild West extravaganza, which made him a household name. Publishers in the East had for some time made an industry of the “Western Dime Novels,” celebrating the exploits—some of which were real, but exaggerated, and others totally fictional—of characters from the western frontier. The East was hungry for almost anything portraying the Western Hero and Cody was the perfect speciman. He was tall, handsome, and was largely the “real deal”.
Cody’s shows were mainly based on his personal exploits, including mock Inidan fights, cavalry charges, pony express rides and buffalo hunts. Eventually, the show included spectatular events where people could see a stagecoach attacked by Indians, rodeo events, trick riding and trick shooting, and aeven a reenactment of the Battle of the Little Bighorn, and a supposed revenge for Custer’s defeat led by Cody and company at the Battle of Warbonnet Creek. And, in his later shows of the early 20th Century he included a tribute to Teddy Roosevelt’s Roughriders. His show featured such noted attractions as Indian Holy Man, Sitting Bull, and woman sharpshooter, Annie Oakley. Cody took his show throughout the United States and Europe. He became one of the most famous and celebrated men in the world, making America’s “Wild West” a place and time that children around the world would fantasize about for generations. Though seen by many as the epitome of the rough and ready frontiersman, Cody was also obsessed with the conservation of nature, with preserving the American Indian’s culture, and protecting dwindling bison heards. He was also a staunch supporter of women’s sufrage.
He was unable to bring the”Wild West” directly into the home, but Cody got as close to it as technology at the time would allow. But, by exposing as many people as he possibly could to his vision of the American Frontier, through his live extravaganzas, he laid the ground work for future showmen and story tellers. Those men and women, with the movie and television technology capable of extending Cody’s vision to our day, would follow Buffalo Bill Cody’s lead and literally bringing it into every home. Because of Buffalo Bill and those that followed him, I spent many hours a week enjoying the images of the Old West on our television and at the movies, and playing cowboys and Indians with my brothers and friends. Quoting words of the young boy depicted at the end of the 1944 film, Buffalo Bill, starring Joel McCray, “God bless you Buffalo Bill.”
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