American History Hit - The Rise of Buffalo Bill

Episode Date: May 11, 2023

He was the most famous man in the world at the turn of the 20th century, bringing the American frontier to the rest of the United States, the United Kingdom and Continental Europe. But who was Buffalo Bill?In this episode, recorded at the Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave in Golden, Colorado, Don is joined by Steve Friesen to find out about the rise of America’s first celebrity.From boy scout to breadwinning buffalo hunter, how did William Cody become a showman and an iconic household name?Produced by Sophie Gee. Mixed by Siobhan Dale. Senior Producer: Charlotte Long.Email us at [e-mail] if you have any areas of history that you would love Don to explore.For more History Hit content, follow our newsletters here.If you’d like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today!Complete the survey and you'll be entered into a prize draw to win 5 Historical Non-Fiction Books- including a signed copy of Dan Snow's 'On This Day in History'. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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A huge Wild West show fronted by an all-action hero who shaped an iconic, enduring image of America. Buffalo Bill. Buffalo Bill was America's first celebrity and the most famous man in the world at the turn of the 20th century. And he's buried right here on this spot just outside of Denver, Colorado. And he chose the spot because it was surrounded by that which he loved so much. The vast beauty of the America West. He was a former scout, soldier, buffalo hunter. But what he's best known for, of course, was his showmanship.

I'm sitting here in Golden, Colorado at the Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave with a man named Steve Fries. Hey, Steve, thanks for talking to me about the life of Buffalo Bill. Well, thanks for talking with me about it too. It's a good subject. Yes, it is. So tell me about the early days. Who was William Cody? That was his name, right?

Before he became Buffalo Bill. Well, Will Cody actually was born in Iowa, and at age eight, his family moved to Leavenworth, Kansas. This is in 1854, just as they open up the territory of Kansas to settlement. So his family was among the first to settle in Kansas. But the big issue at the time was the... issue of slavery and the family got sucked into the vortex of if you will the disagreements over slavery and whether to allow it in the state of Kansas. Wow. So his father was a farmer? An entrepreneur and you could say he was a farmer. He did

farm but he helped start a mill. He helped start a town and some things like that. So he was more an entrepreneur. He did a trading post for a while and his mom was a teacher as I understand. His mom started out as a teacher. By the time they moved there though when they built a new home she started taking in travelers and they would provide a hotel situation. So this is a young boy from a fairly ordinary frontier lifestyle. His family were anti-slavery. I mean, abolitionists?

Yes, they were. Yeah. Actually, Kansas is in the midst of this struggle. Will the West, most particularly in that case, Kansas, become slave states or non-slave states? And Buffalo Bill, of course he was Will Cody and become Buffalo Bill, but his family was in favor of it being a free state, no slave. So this is going on, there's debates going on, and what happens is at a local store, there are some people talking about this issue,

and Will's father stands up and talks out against slavery, unaware that there are a lot of pro-slavery people in the ground. One of them jumps up and jumps onto the sort of makeshift stage and stabs his father several times. Kills him? He doesn't kill him, but he becomes very badly wounded. He is nursed back to health and continues his work to keep slavery out of Kansas. Not only did they try once to kill him, when he recovered and continued his work for abolition, then they kept stalking him trying to kill him over the next couple years. So when Will was eight, he found out the pro-slavers were planning to kill his father. The story goes, he rode his horse prince, incidentally. The horse was named Prince,

and valiantly stayed ahead of the pro-slavers and warned his father, then escaped out the back door into the cornfield and into the woods beyond. His horsemanship saves the day. His horsemanship saves the day. Prince was Buffalo Bill's first horse and was the beginning of his love of horses that translated later on to him putting horsemanship front and center at the Wild West Show. Isaac Cody, that's his dad, right? Eventually dies. Will loses his dad early on. How old is he? Well in 1857, finally the pro-slavers got what they wanted. The wound was two of much for his father, Isaac, to bear. He got a fever and he died. And at that point, at the ripe age

of 11, Will becomes the man of the family. And he actually at that point embarks on the very early adventures that would become a part of his Wild West show. Well, he has to go to work as any young kid without a father would have to do in those days. What did he do then? What were those early jobs? He starts out as a backup wagon driver on a team heading between St. Joseph, Missouri and Salt Lake. So he's already riding a wagon across the plains. This is what, 1860 or thereabouts, that he's doing this, a young boy going across the plains, and at this point he is exposed to everything. He sees his first buffalo and is among these rough teamsters,

some of whom were nicer to him than others. And one of them in particular tried to beat him up. And it was at that point that he meets Wild Bill Hickok who intervenes and protects him from this bully. The famous gunslinger, Wild Bill Lucas. And the two of them become friends over the years. They keep encountering each other. And in fact, for a brief time,

while Bill Hickok even joins Buffalo Bill on stage. So back in his early youth, though, I mean, these are days of the Gold Rush, 1849, So years after the gold rush is over, kind of, but he's in the midst of that whole sort of progress across America. The Western... There is, but that's the first gold rush. Yeah. 1849, but then the big one for us is 1859, the rush to the Rockies.

And Will Cody is with them. 1859, Will Cody is going across the Great Plains, coming here to Golden Colorado, actually, and then going up in the mountains to the area around Central City, hoping to find gold like everyone else. It is a failure. He doesn't find any gold. Has to head back home. And it's that point that he gets hired to work with the Pony Express. As a rider. As a rider. So it's interesting how these things all kind of fit together at various points in these early years of his life. I like that story. I read a little bit about that where we say Pony Express rider, there was more of a specific function to his riding, right? I mean, more of a functionary. Well, he's a messenger. He did

some riding, I believe, for the Pony Express on the regular route. But But this is a point of contention amongst historians. So some of us believe he did ride with the Pony Express, others say he did not. I base my evidence on the fact that Alexander Major is one of the founders of Pony Express said the Buffalo Bill had ridden with the Pony Express as well as some of the other Pony Express riders. My philosophy or my theory is that had it not been for Buffalo Bill recreating that pony express every day for almost 30 years and there's a lot of it.

Wild West Show, it wouldn't be as important an episode in American history as it has become. It was only for a few months and was quickly superseded by the telegraph and eventually the railroad. I'm just fascinated by these formative years and how many seeds are planted in this man's brain about what becomes the myth of the West, what he has a big part in creating, very much is rooted in his own childhood. Oh, yeah. The experiences he has against this backdrop of this Western expansion. As a folklorist, I know that every myth has. its basis in reality. And the myths, if you will, that were built from Buffalo Bill's Wild West

and many things that happened later are based on the realities of the West. And those people who had been in the West, at the same time the Buffalo Bill was as a young man, said, yeah, that's what we experienced. And it's interesting when later on with the Wild West show, you'll have these old Army generals, other people who grew up in the West at the same time saying, I go to see the show because it is a nostalgic thing for me. I experienced that. So this myth, yes, gets built on it, but in a way, this is the reality. What about the Civil War?

Did he serve in the Civil War? He did briefly in the Civil War. The story goes, and he was very devoted to his mother, and one of the reasons he favored women's suffrage and spoke out on behalf of women's rights, he loved his mother greatly, and when she died, he said he started hanging out with some rather rough characters, and he says after a point, he was a very rough characters. on a bench, a little too much drinking, and sober up to discover that he had enlisted in the Kansas cavalry on the side of the Union Army. Of course, he would not have been on the side of the

Confederacy. And at that point, he became involved with the Civil War, and he was involved a couple of skirmishes and some other things. Out here, I mean, out the west. In the West, yes. I'll be right back after this short break. Meantime, if you'd like us to cover anything specifically, if you have any ideas of subject matter we should be looking at, send us an email at A&EA. H at history hit.com. We'd love to hear from you. From biblical fame to its fabled great walls,

Babylon was home to kings, conquerors, and wonders of the ancient world. But what do we actually know about this legendary city? And how much is still shrouded in mystery? Join me, Tristan Hughes, every Sunday throughout May on the ancients, as we delve into the story of Babylon. We'll be covering topics varying from the King Nebuchadnezzar the Second and how he forged a massive Babylonian empire, will be exploring the mystery of the hanging gardens of Babylon, looking at world-renowned objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder, and also looking at Babylon in the aftermath of one of the most well-known conquerors in the whole of history. Babylon after Alexander the Great. That's all to come. This may on the ancients, every scientist.

So the name Buffalo Bill, I mean it sounds like a cartoon almost. So William Cody becomes Buffalo Bill. Tell me about how that works. It's not unusual, it seems like a cartoon, because Buffalo Bill characters have appeared in cartoons over the years. But back in that day, that term Buffalo Bill was indeed an honorific term almost, speaking to his skill as a buffalo hunter. So he basically, after the war is trying to find ways to make money,

and one of them is he becomes a Buffalo hunter for the railroads, hunter for the railroad, Union Pacific, and he is so good at it that they start giving him this nickname of Buffalo Bill. Now, he isn't the only Buffalo Bill. There's another guy, Bill Comstock, that some people are calling Buffalo Bill. And the story goes that the two of them had a shoot out in Western Kansas to see who could shoot the most buffalo in one day. Whoever shoots the most Buffalo in one day becomes Buffalo Bill. And of course, our Buffalo Bill, Will Cody, becomes Buffalo Bill. And Comstock has to go find a different nickname. That's pretty good.

The thing of it is when Buffalo Bill hunted for Buffalo, he was doing it as a meat hunter. He shot what was needed for meat, and for the most part, he didn't waste them. And what happens is even if he killed 4,000 or 11,000 buffalo in his lifetime, I think that's, he even admitted he probably killed 11,000 buffalo. That is a drop in the bucket compared to the number of buffalo that were out here when he first started hunting. It was the devastation of the hide hunters, people shooting buffalo from train cars, all of those things going on that really had a lot to do with the death of the buffalo. And when Buffalo Bill was aware that the numbers were being taken down in devastating amounts that so many Buffalo were being killed, he spoke out against it. So he's kind of taken some flack over the years because of his name Buffalo Bill. But he did not earn that name by being an exterminated.

of Buffalo. Right. But it was based on his hunting fame, basically, that he becomes a little bit famous, and a man named Ned Buntline becomes aware of him. So basically what happens is, yes, he becomes kind of famous as a buffalo hunter, but he is hired by the Army as well to be a scout. They work under contract, and he knows the Great Plains so well that he is hired to be a scout. So he ends up hunting Buffalo for the Army as well as being a scout.

during that time that his reputation starts to grow. It grows within the army itself so that certain generals are saying, this Buffalo Bill, he's really good at this. You want to have him. So you start seeing him of building a reputation even before he meets Ned Buntline. So Ned Buntline meets him while his reputation is growing, writes that for the New York Weekly, I believe it is. He writes that dime novel about Buffalo Bill,

and that just catapults him into the larger audiences. interest. Ned Buntline. Tell me about this man. Ned Buntline was an opportunist. I wouldn't say he was an entrepreneur. He was a journalist. Well, he was a journalist, but he was a muckraker. He made up stories. In fact, what he wrote about Buffalo Bill was almost entirely not true when he wrote that first dime novel, but he used Buffalo Bill's name in it. He's out here, like so many of those writers, looking for good content. He's looking for good content, and he would do whatever it took to make money. He was a member of the no-nothings. Oh, really? Yeah, so he was a very anti-immigrant and started a riot in St. Louis. Yeah, I mean, Ned Bunnline is not the kind of guy that was really like Buffalo Bill.

What happens is, though Ned Bunnline invites Buffalo Bill after the weekly is published and the band novels are out, Ned Bunnline invites Buffalo Bill to come to New York. By that time, there have been several very wealthy men in New York who went on a hunt with him, who want him to come to New York to. They're going to kind of show off this guy from the west. So he goes to New York. He whined and dine. He meets all people like Thomas Nast, and he becomes sort of a well-known guy about town. He is invited to have dinner at Delmonicos and places like that. This is his first time back east. It's his absolute first time, certainly first time in New York. It's the first time, really, to spend any time east of the Mississippi. At this point,

Bunline says, you know, there is a play based on your life, based on my book about your life, down at the Bowery. So they go to the Bowery and he sees the play and then they stop during intermission and they say, as a matter of fact that the subject of this play is here in the audience today. Buffalo Bill, you know, makes his bow and waves and people are screaming and yelling and clapping afterwards. He's offered a role in the play. He's not sure he can do it. But this kind of plants a seed. He goes back to the west and Ned Buttline keeps pestering him, say, you know, you ought to be, you ought to play yourself. You don't have, you can make some money playing yourself. There doesn't have to be somebody else playing Buffalo Bill. And he kind of

sets it up so that by December, so this, he's visiting in May, by December, Buffalo Bill decides to join Ned Bunnline and another scout named Texas Jack Omahundro. And the three of them go on stage in Chicago. And that's the beginning of Buffalo Bill's stage career. And what year is this? It was in December of 1872. And by 1873, he's traveling the U.S. Wow. Fall of 1873, they've brought in a lot of money. Texas Jack and Buffalo Bill find out Ned Buntline has pocketed most of the earnings. That's what he was like, Ned Buntling. He was a bit of a scow leg. And so they split from him, and Buffalo Bill basically starts

something called the Buffalo Bill combination that continues this for the next 10 years doing stage plays all over the country. It's very popular. From in the 70s into the 80s. Into the 80s. And then he goes to a whole new level. At 1883, he starts Buffalo Bill's Wild West and it's the new level. You can't do much with showing the West on a small stage.

It's basically a melodrama context. He takes it outside, puts it into... door arenas, he brings the animals, the people, the wagons, the stagecoaches, all of them to your town to show you what life is like in the West. Imagine you're living somewhere like upstate New York. And there all of a sudden Buffalo Bill's Wild West coming to Rochester. And you get to see everything you've been reading about in the newspapers, reading about in the dime novels, there it is, live and in person, with the man himself, Buffalo Bill. It's such a unlikely epic to have a boy from a small town of Kansas end up teaching the entire

country the story of his life and the life of the American West which eventually becomes mythologized it works its way to the books the movies onward and upward and it's all really rooted in in Buffalo Bill but the thing of it is it is the American story this is the American dream the rags to riches you know Andrew Jackson growing up at a log cabin becoming president Buffalo Bill growing up basically or his early years in a log cabin, going through all these experiences, becoming one of the most famous Americans of his day, and still one of the most famous Americans as far as the rest

of the world is concerned. Actor or not, Buffalo Bill was a showman. His early performances had sparked aflame, and now he wanted to create his own show, something far, far bigger. And it wouldn't just be a performance by actors, but an extravagant display from the real characters of the Wild West, including Bill Cody's own youth as a buffalo hunter. Thanks for listening to this episode of American History Hit. I hope you enjoyed it. Please don't forget to like, review, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. I'll see you next time.