Cody, Buffalo Bill

Cody, Buffalo Bill.

ACHIEVEMENT(S): Opening up the West.

NICKNAME/ALIAS: Real name: Cody, William Frederick.

DATE/PLACE OF BIRTH: 26^th February, 1846 in LeClaire, Scott County, IN

DATE/PLACE/AGE AT DEATH: 10^th January, 1917 in Denver, CO. Aged 70.

DISCIPLINE: Frontiersman, entertainer.

FIELD: Theatre.

LANGUAGE: English.

PARENTS: Isaac Cody and Mary Ann Bonsell Lacock.

SIBLINGS: Martha, Julia, William, Eliza Alice, Laura Ella, Mary Hannah, Charles Whitney.

SPOUSE: Louisa Frederici.

CHILDREN: Kit Carson, Arta, Irma Louise, Orra Maude (died as child).

EDUCATION: Country schools.

MAJOR WORK: The Wild West Show.

LIFE AND TIMES: Cody’s formal education came to an end in 1859 when he went prospecting in Denver, where he failed to find any gold.

In March the following year, Cody went to Kansas where, until November 1861, he rode for the Pony Express*. While working for them, he rode their third longest emergency journey, 322 miles, when he had to travel an extra stage after finding that his relief rider had been killed.

When the Civil War broke out, Cody was taken on by the Ninth Kansas Volunteer Cavalry as a scout and guide, and enlisted for service with the Seventh Kansas Volunteer Cavalry in February 1864. During his nineteen months of service as a private, he saw action in Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas and Kansas.

The year after his discharge, Cody married and went to Salt Creek Valley to run a hotel be a scout at Fort Ellsworth. He went into in partnership with William Rose, a contractor to the Kansas and Pacific Railroad, and they built a settlement in Kansas, where they set up a saloon and store, but the new railroad they had been expecting bypassed them and their business failed.

Even so, the building of the railroad brought Cody work when he was contracted to supply fresh meat to the construction workers on the Union Pacific Railroad, Eastern Division, later the Kansas Pacific Railroad. To meet their needs, he had to slaughter twelve buffalo every day, and, after he had killed nearly 5,000, became known as ‘Buffalo Bill’.

At the same time, Cody was working as a dispatch rider in Indian Territory and came to the attention of Lieutenant General Philip Sheridan, who took him on as chief of scouts for the 5^th United States Cavalry, from 1868 to 1872. During his four years with the army, Cody took part in sixteen Indian battles, including the defeat of the Cheyenne in July 1869 at Summit Springs.

During this time, Cody was moonlighting as a scout for civilian hunting parties and he entertained some of these with his earliest Wild West Shows, for which he quickly became well-known.

After going on one hunting trip in 1869, the dime novelist, Ned Buntline (real name Zane Carroll Judson) wrote an adventure story in which Buffalo Bill was the hero. He wrote a second in 1872, then encouraged Cody to go East to take part in a stage version of his own story: ‘The Scouts of the Prairie’. For the next few years, in the summer, Cody scouted for the army or guided hunting parties and during the winter months went on theatre tours.

While he was with the army, in 1876, during the Sioux war, he killed the Cheyenne warrior Yellow Hand. In 1879, Cody’s first autobiography appeared and he began to write dime novels based on his experiences in the West. In all, Cody appeared as the hero in about 1,700 stories.

The Buffalo Bill Wild West Show toured the fairgrounds of Omaha, Nebraska from 1883. It was an outdoor extravaganza featuring re-enactments of the Pony Express, Indian attacks on the Deadwood stagecoach, Custer’s Last Stand and the Battle of Summit Springs, as well as horse racing and roping events. Cody, dressed in a buckskin jacket, staged the shows himself.

Directing the action from his horse, he was in fact the main attraction, and almost all the acts were based on his real life experiences. Other big names starred alongside Cody, including Annie Oakley, ‘Little Sure Shot’, Johnny Baker, ‘the Cow-boy Kid’, Buck Taylor, ‘King of the Cowboys’ and even Sitting Bull, the Sioux chief, toured during 1886.

By now, the show was a financial success, and, in spite of some troubles after Cody’s first partner died in 1902, was destined to tour for another thirty years. Cody took the show to Europe in 1889, and, by popular demand, went back again two years later, when he met Queen Victoria*.

In the same year that he went to Europe for the first time, Cody staged his show at the World’s Fair in Chicago, by which time an estimated six million people had seen it. Cody toured until 1912, when he retired

In 1913, he came out of retirement and set up his own film company in co-operation with the Essanay Film Company of Chicago. The aim of the company, “Colonel W F Cody (Buffalo Bill) Historical Pictures,” was to make films based on Cody’s life and the Old West. Eight one-reelers were produced, all directed by Cody, who played the lead in all of them.

Although Cody’s Wild West Shows had been a huge financial success, because he was no good in business, Cody was never a rich man and, in 1902, set up as a hotelier in the Irma Hotel, in the town of Cody, a settlement he and his business partners had founded.

ASSESSMENT: His effect on westward settlement was significant.

EXTRA CONNECTIONS: He used a Remington* rifle, and his early stage work included vaudeville* performances.

A rival stage performer, SF Cody*, copied him.

ONELINER: ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody, hero of the West

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Russell, Don, The Lives and Legends of Buffalo Bill, The University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma, 1960.

William Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody (February 26, 1846 – January 10, 1917) was an American scout, bison hunter, and showman. He was born in the Iowa Territory (now the U.S. state of Iowa), in Le Claire but he grew up for several years in his father's hometown in Canada before his family moved to the Kansas Territory.

Buffalo Bill started working at the age of eleven after his father's death, and became a rider for the Pony Express at age 14. During the American Civil War, he served from 1863 to the end of the war in 1865. Later he served as a civilian scout to the US Army during the Indian Wars, receiving the Medal of Honor in 1872.

One of the most colorful figures of the American Old West, Buffalo Bill started performing in shows that displayed cowboy themes and episodes from the frontier and Indian Wars. He founded his Buffalo Bill's Wild West in 1883, taking his large company on tours throughout the United States and, beginning in 1887, in Great Britain and Europe.

Contents

• **1 Nickname and work**
• **2 Early life and education**
• **3 Military service**
• **4 Buffalo Bill's Wild West**
  • **4.1 Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Tours Europe**
• **5 Life in Cody, Wyoming**
  • **5.1 Irrigation**
• **6 Death**
• **7 Philosophy**
• **8 Legacy and honors**
• **9 Representation in other media**
  • **9.1 Film**
  • **9.2 Literature**
  • **9.3 Music**
  • **9.4 Musicals and theater**
  • **9.5 Television**
• **10 See also**
• **11 References**
  • **11.1 Bibliography**
• **12 Further reading**
• **13 External links**

Nickname and work

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Buffalo_Bill_Cody_by_Sarony,_c1880.jpg).

**"Buffalo Bill" got nicknamed after his contract to supply**Kansas Pacific Railroad workers with buffalo meat

William Frederick Cody ("Buffalo Bill") got his nickname after the American Civil War when he had a contract to supply Kansas Pacific Railroadworkers with buffalo meat.^[1] Cody is purported to have killed 4,282 American bison (commonly known as buffalo) in eighteen months, (1867–1868).^[2] Cody and hunter William Comstock competed in an eight-hour^[3] buffalo-shooting match over the exclusive right to use the name, in which Cody won by killing 68 bison to Comstock's 48.^[4] Comstock, part Cheyenne and a noted hunter, scout, and interpreter, used a fast-shootingHenry repeating rifle, while Cody competed with a larger-caliber Springfield Model 1863, which he called Lucretia Borgia after legendary beautiful, ruthless Italian noblewoman, the subject of a popular contemporary Victor Hugo play of the same name. Cody explained that while his formidable opponent, Comstock, chased after his buffalo, engaging from the rear of the herd and leaving a trail of killed buffalo "scattered over a distance of three miles", Cody - likening his strategy to a billiards player "nursing" his billiard balls during "a big run" - first rode his horse to the front of the herd to target the leaders, forcing the followers to one side, eventually causing them to circle and create an easy target, dropping them close together.^[5]

Cody had documented service as a soldier during the Civil War and as Chief of Scouts for the Third Cavalry during the Plains Wars. He claimed to have had many jobs, including as a trapper, bullwhacker, "Fifty-Niner" in Colorado, a Pony Express rider in 1860, wagonmaster, stagecoachdriver, and a hotel manager, but historians have since had difficulty documenting them. He may have fabricated some for publicity.^[6]

Cody became world famous for his Wild West Shows, which toured in Great Britain and Europe. Audiences were enthusiastic about seeing a piece of the American West.^[7] Emilio Salgari, a noted Italian writer of adventure stories, met Buffalo Bill when he came to Italy and saw his show; Salgari later featured Cody as a hero in some of his novels.

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