William “Buffalo Bill” Cody was an American entertainer best known for his Wild, Wild West shows, which ran from 1883 to 1908. Cody’s shows featured gunslingers, Native Americans, and even live buffalo and toured across the United States and Europe. During his life, Cody worked as an army scout, army teamster, Pony Express rider, wagon train driver, expert buffalo hunter, fur trapper, and gold prospector. Cody was an advocate for Native Americans later in life, even though he widely publicized his time as an Indian tracker, fighter, and killer. To further prove his dedication to Native American rights, Cody hired Sitting Bull and twenty of his braves to participate in his elaborate shows about the plains and cowboys so they could make “honest wages.”
William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody earned fame for his traveling Wild West show around the turn of the twentieth century. Cody served as a scout for the U.S. Army in the west and acquired a well-deserved reputation as a buffalo hunter. His turn to entertainment satisfied an audience demand for reenactments of Battle of Big Horn and the Pony Express. (Library of Congress)
Cody was born in Le Claire, Iowa, on February 26, 1846. The Cody family moved several times during his childhood as Isaac Cody, William’s father, searched for work. The family even spent time in Canada when William was a baby. Isaac Cody eventually sold his land in Iowa to move to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, which was in the heartland of Indian Territory. During the height of the Civil War, Isaac Cody was known for speaking out against slavery and was even stabbed during one of his antislavery speeches. Soon after his brush with death, he traveled to Ohio to gather antislavery families to settle in Kansas in the hopes of changing the political climate in the area. Isaac returned home with an upper respiratory infection, which, combined with kidney disease and the lingering effects of his stabbing, led to his death in early 1857. With his family in need of an income, William began working at the age of eleven as a “boy extra” who rode messages between freight carrier cars.
Soon after, Cody began working as an army scout. During his time in Utah, Cody became a so-called “Indian fighter” and took part in small skirmishes between the U.S. Army and different groups of Native peoples. However, Cody left the army at the age of fourteen and turned his attention to hunting for gold. Historians debate whether Cody actually ever spent time panning for gold because on his way to the gold fields in California he was approached to work for the Pony Express. Due to his lengthy experience of riding horses and delivering messages with the railway, Cody was an ideal choice for the job, and he worked as a paid rider until his mother became ill. By the time Cody’s mother had recovered and was able to care for herself again, the Civil War was well underway, but the Union Army rejected Cody because he was too young to serve. It was not until Cody was seventeen that he was able to work for the army and was assigned to the job of teamster. When Cody was discharged in 1865, he turned his attentions to a young woman named Louisa, whom he married. The couple had four children, but unfortunately two of their children died very early in life.
Cody soon returned to working for the U.S. Army. He began serving as an army scout (1868–1872) and helped to locate Native Americans and buffalo. During his work with the army, Cody was contracted to bring buffalo meat to the Kansas Pacific Railroad. It is reported that in eighteen months, Cody was responsible for harvesting more than 4,000 buffalo. Men began calling him “Buffalo Bill,” and the name stuck. News traveled of Cody’s hunting abilities, and a hunter named William Comstock, who had also begun calling himself “Buffalo Bill,” challenged Cody to a buffalo hunting competition. It was agreed that the winner of the eight-hour competition would be able to use the nickname while the other would be forced to give up the name forever. Cody accepted the challenge and won, reportedly killing a total of sixty-eight buffalo—twenty more than Comstock. The now-uncontested nickname stuck for the rest of Cody’s life. In his later years, Cody was a proponent of establishing hunting seasons and advocated against killing merely for animal hides.
Cody first began working in the entertainment industry in 1872 in Chicago. Ned Buntline had already founded a successful Wild West show known as Scouts of the Prairie and took Cody on as an actor. Cody learned his part and retold stories about Warbonnet Creek, even claiming to have scalped a Cheyenne warrior. A great deal of the storyline Cody created for his character was fictionalized or embellished. Historians often debate whether Cody actually held all of the jobs he claimed to have worked. In particular, they question whether Cody ever scalped a Native American. While Cody obviously did kill Native Americans during his time in the U.S. Army, it is unlikely he ever went as far as scalping his foes. During his time touring with Buntline, Cody became friends with “Wild Bill” Hickok (1837–1876) and worked with his close friend “Texas” Jack Omohundro (1846–1880). The trio remained in contact throughout their lives, but in 1883 Cody decided that he was interested in opening his own show. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West was founded in 1883 in North Platte, Nebraska. The show began as an annually touring circus-type show that featured animals and a few small acts.
As the show increased in popularity and acts evolved in the 1890s, Cody renamed the show Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World. The show included an extended horseback parade. Members of U.S. military branches, cowboys, Native Americans, and other flashy performers rode in the parade. At times, performers from across the world made appearances in Cody’s show, including Turks, gauchos, Arabs, Mongols, and Georgians, who dressed themselves and their horses in their nations’ regalia. Notable performers also included Annie Oakley (1860–1926) and Frank Butler (1847–1926), a married sharpshooting team. Each performance contained several different acts to entertain the crowd. Performers often dressed up as members of the Pony Express to begin the festivities. Indian attacks on wagon trains and robberies were also common. A typical finale could include a reenactment of the infamous Custer’s Last Stand with Cody himself often playing the part of Custer. These reenactments of Custer’s Last Stand began to be phased out by 1907. In total twenty-three of thirty-three shows included reenactments of Custer’s Last Stand. The show was so popular that Cody took the show abroad to Europe and Great Britain where he became an international celebrity. Several members from the Lakota tribes that toured with Custer died during the many trips to Europe, often of diseases or horse-related accidents.
During his life, Cody was able to write his memoirs, titled The Life of Hon. William F. Cody, Known as Buffalo Bill. A great deal of Cody’s personal experiences are recorded in his own words. As with all accounts of his life told by Cody, historians have disagreed about the factuality of his memoirs. Regardless, the autobiography was widely read and helped to further the legendary status of one of America’s most notable men. Cody recounts that his days of buffalo hunting, which earned him his nickname, were part of America’s Manifest Destiny. Throughout the work, Cody discusses his life, though he writes considerably less on his life after his return from Europe.
Cody returned to Wyoming, where he founded his own town, which was incorporated in 1901. The main hotel in Cody, the Irma, was named after his daughter. He also established the TE ranch and ran one thousand head of cattle. The ranch eventually became a dude ranch and offered horseback riding, camping adventures, and big game hunts. Friends of Cody came from all corners of the world to visit the ranch house. In the early 1900s, Cody began experiencing difficulties with his health. He died of kidney failure on January 10, 1917. After his death Cody’s family planned his funeral. Although other friends and family members suggested that he should be buried in Cody, Wyoming, his wife, Louisa, insisted that Cody wanted to be buried on Lookout Mountain in Colorado. There were many debates, but eventually her view prevailed and Cody was laid to rest on Lookout Mountain. However, the Cody chapter of the American Legion would later offer a reward to whomever returned Buffalo Bill’s body to the town of Cody. For several months the Denver chapter of the American Legion guarded the grave until Cody’s body could be moved further into the mountain.
Michelle Nicole Boyer
See also Custer, George Armstrong; Hickok, James Butler “Wild Bill”; Oakley, Annie
Further Reading
Carter, Robert A. 2002. Buffalo Bill Cody: The Man Behind the Legend. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Cody, Col. William F. 1904. The Adventures of Buffalo Bill Cody. New York and London: Harper & Brothers.
Griffin, Charles Eldridge. 2010. Four Years in Europe with Buffalo Bill. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Moses, L. G. 1996. Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians, 1883–1933. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Russell, Don. 1979. The Lives and Legends of Buffalo Bill. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.