Frontier Legends | Buffalo Bill Cody | 6

Few people are more closely associated with the Western Frontier than William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody. Born in 1846, Cody came of age during the era of Westward expansion. As a young man, he began scouting for the 5th Cavalry and eventually built a reputation as a skilled frontiersman. He later took his exploits to the stage and then created Buffalo Bill’s Wild West arena show, which carried the image of the American West around the globe. In this episode, Lindsay is joined by Dr. Paul Andrew Hutton, author of the New York Times bestseller The Undiscovered Country: Triumph, Tragedy and the Shaping of the American West, and Tate Chair of Western History in the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming, to discuss Buffalo Bill’s central role in shaping the mythology of the Wild West. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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• 0:00Lindsay Graham?

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• 0:15Lindsay Graham?

  From Audible Originals, I'm Lindsay Graham, and this is American History Tellers, our history, your story.

• 0:36Lindsay Graham?

  When William Buffalo Bill Cody died on January 10, 1917, President Theodore Roosevelt called him "an American of Americans," and the country mourned one of its most famous characters. Over his lifetime, Cody had come to epitomize the rugged frontiersmen of the Wild West, continuing the legacy of Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett. Born in 1846, Cody came of age as workers built the Transcontinental Railroad. He hunted buffalo to feed them and worked as a scout for the Army. Later, he took his skill on the road with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, and it was that rodeo and pageant that came to define the story of the American frontier, a creation myth for the new nation.

• 1:17Lindsay Graham?

  Dr. Paul Andrew Hutton is the Tate Chair of Western History in the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming, and author of the New York Times bestseller, The Undiscovered Country: Triumph, Tragedy, and the Shaping of the American West. Our conversation is next.

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• 2:45Lindsay Graham?

  Dr. Paul Hutton, welcome to American History Tellers.

• 2:48Speaker 03

  Thanks for having me, Lindsey.

• 2:49Lindsay Graham?

  So, let's start a little earlier than Buffalo Bill's time. To understand, really, I guess, the timeline of westward expansion, it's interesting to realize how intertwined the desire for westward expansion was with the American Revolution. Can you give us an idea of this desire to push west?

• 3:09Speaker 03

  Well, the westward movement was, in fact, one of the causes of the American Revolution. The Proclamation of 1763 came out of London, and it stopped all settlement west of the crest of the Appalachian Mountains. The land was to be retained as Indian territory, and the British wanted to keep a tight rein on the fur trade, which was the oil of the 18th century. They had just fought a war with France to win this territory, and now they wanted to secure their trading partners, the Native American tribes of the Old Northwest and the Old Southwest. And they didn't want the American pioneers disrupting that. This

• 3:51Speaker 03

  infuriated both land speculators like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, as well as the hardy pioneers like Daniel Boone, the long hunters who were pushing across the mountain barrier. And while the land speculators sort of obeyed the British, the pioneers did not. It was a flood that just swept across the mountains and up Cumberland Gap, up the Wilderness Road into Kentucky, which, of course, set up conflict with the Native Americans and with the British.

• 4:21Lindsay Graham?

  You mentioned land speculators. This brings up the question of land surveyors in this early westward expansion. Who were some of the people involved in this business?

• 4:31Speaker 03

  Well, George Washington was one of them. In my book, The Undiscovered Country, George Washington kind of took over the early chapters because I became so fascinated with him as a Western hero. He had done surveying work in the Shenandoah Valley, but he was also interested in the land beyond the Appalachians. And he, in fact, kept an agent, William Crawford, out in the Western country, staking out land despite the fact that the Proclamation of 1763 outlawed this. He wrote his friends, saying, "Well, this proclamation won't last, and eventually we'll get this land, and you've got to stake out, you know, the best land possible." And then, of course, he also used land bounties that had been given to soldiers

• 5:13Speaker 03

  in the French and Indian Wars, payment for their service. Well, he would pay pennies on the dollar, as did many other land speculators, for this acreage. And, of course, it's a gamble. You don't know if it's ever going to be opened up, but it certainly gives you an incentive to see people go west.

• 5:32Lindsay Graham?

  Of course, after the American Revolution, the British ban on westward expansion is not an object anymore, and westward expansion began in earnest with white Americans exploring and settling "empty land." What are some of the routes they took westward, and how did they even know about them?

• 5:50Speaker 03

  Well, sort of the most famous and the great road to the West was the Cumberland Gap, which was a pass through the Appalachians that led up into Kentucky. It was pioneered, most famously, by Daniel Boone as what was called a long hunter. The hunters would go out two years at a time sometimes, and they were hunting whitetail deer. Deer skins went out of southern ports to London. And he scouted out the land of Kentucky. He saw it as a paradise. He saw it as the future, not just for himself, but for his family, for his friends, and frankly, for his nation. And so, while George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, Franklin,

• 6:29Speaker 03

  all had a vision of the West as the future for America, it was people like Daniel Boone and those who followed him through the Cumberland Gap, and eventually 300,000 people followed him up the Wilderness Road, who made that a reality. And it was a horrendous struggle. And Boonesboro, it was in the bluegrass country of Kentucky, became the outpost of liberty, the furthest outpost of liberty during the American Revolution. And the British, of course, unleashed their forces, and they also unleashed Indian forces against the pioneers.

• 7:04Lindsay Graham?

  These hardy frontierspeople you've mentioned, Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Annie Oakley, Kit Carson, we have a certain mythology that we think about, rifles, fringe jackets, and a sort of can-do attitude of an emerging nation. But you also point out a cruel irony of history baked into this westward expansion. What do you mean by that phrase?

• 7:25Speaker 03

  Well, you know, they called it manifest destiny. It was the idea that nature or God had ordained that America would overspread the entire continent. Thomas Jefferson called it "an empire for liberty," and he said that one day it would be a place where all the dispossessed peoples of the world would come. And he said, "300 million people will live here." It seems crazy that he was so prescient, that he saw that, but he did. Their dream was to bring the kind of ideals of democracy to all the peoples of the world. But, of course, what about the people that are already there? And there's a total disregard in this ideology of manifest destiny for the rights of the folks that are there, Native American

• 8:08Speaker 03

  peoples. And by the time we get west of the Mississippi River, Hispanic peoples, who have come up into New Mexico and Arizona and California, certainly into New Mexico before Jamestown. And there's a total disregard for their rights. And, of course, the great tragedy is in the fate of Native American peoples. Of course, they have a culture and a lifestyle, especially out on the Great Plains, that's incompatible with American society, and it's an inevitable conflict. Could it have been handled better? Of course. Was it done callously and ruthlessly? Yes, of course it was. One of the things that fascinated me, especially in writing my book, was the idea of the sort of glory of the triumph of American. The book is very

• 8:52Speaker 03

  positive. It has seven protagonists, three of them Native Americans. Everyone's heroic, but what was the price of the great nation that we just have celebrated our wonderful anniversary of? Well, it was a terrible price, and sort of our generation is paying that price in the way we are reassessing ourselves. No reason to beat up too much on people in the past, but we certainly want to acknowledge it, and we could certainly do some things in modern-day America to make right what happened to Native peoples in the 19th and 18th century.

• 9:24Lindsay Graham?

  You used the phrase "glory of the triumph," which echoes this kind of mythology of the frontier. But I wonder how early on this mythology began. Were people already starting to write about the frontier, spreading stories that new generations of people grew up reading?

• 9:39Speaker 03

  Well, you know, I think the first Wild West story is written by John Smith, when he goes back to England and comes up with his tales of the settlement of Virginia and the story of Pocahontas, you know, the beautiful Indian princess who's going to be featured all throughout Western literature, film, and history. We really see it being formed in a little book by John Filson on the settlement of Kentucky that featured Daniel Boone as the hero. And Boone is quoted in it as saying that he was an instrument sent by God to settle the wilderness, which he had to do with blood, the blood of his family. And Boone, in turn, then became the model for Hawkeye in The Last of the Mohicans, which became

• 10:22Speaker 03

  the first great American bestseller in the 1820s. And then we see with the rise of Western characters, both political figures like Andrew Jackson, Sam Houston, Henry Clay, but also semi-political figures, but real frontiersmen like Davy Crockett, they represent the new America. And it's a hard pill for the folks in New England and the folks in Tidewater, Virginia to take when Andrew Jackson overturns the entire political system and brings his brand of democracy to Washington. So that's the political and social triumph of the West with Jackson and Crockett.

• 11:01Lindsay Graham?

  Now, I imagine a young Bill Cody would have grown up on these stories of the frontiersmen, but the world he was born into saw the frontier melting away. The California Gold Rush got underway while Cody was just a toddler. Paint us a picture of the state of America that Bill Cody came of age in.

• 11:19Speaker 03

  Well, Cody is born in 1846 in Iowa, which is then the frontier. But the family moves to Kansas, where his father takes a leading role in the abolitionist movement there and is in fact stabbed while giving an anti-slavery speech. And he dies. He dies months later from the wounds. Young Bill saw him as the first martyr in the fight for liberty to free the slaves. And so he grows up in a time of incredible violence and for him, personal tragedy. And he finds early employment as a result of this movement west. He works for a firm called Russell Majors and Waddell, and they are providing the supply

• 12:00Speaker 03

  trains that are taking supplies out to the western posts, and especially during the 1857 Mormon War out in Utah. And young Bill is hired by this company. And eventually, the company, once the Civil War is breaking out, eventually that company forms the Pony Express. And he rides for the Pony Express. And then when he's 17, he enlists in the Union Army and fights in the Civil War. So he grows up like so many of his generation in a time of great change, great turmoil, and bloodshed. We live in a time in which people are divided, but my goodness, grew up in the 1850s. And then it just gets worse. You know, there's a Civil War and 630,000 Americans are killed.

• 12:44Speaker 03

  So these were desperate times. And he came of age in these times. And so he lives the frontier for the first 20 years of his life, but he starts out just as a kid. And after the war, he became a buffalo hunter for the railroad. That's where he earned his nickname, Buffalo Bill. Great name. And then he became a scout for the Army and in fact, received the Congressional Medal of Honor for one of his fights with the Sioux. And so he was a celebrated character already by the 1870s when he's 30 years old.

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• 14:22Lindsay Graham?

  Buffalo Bill Cody rubs shoulders with all sorts of characters as a young man out on the frontier. Can you tell me about two of them? Lieutenant Colonel George Custer and then of course, James Butler Wild Bill Hickok.

• 14:42Speaker 03

  Young Bill Cody, he was called Will by his family, was working for Russell Majors and Waddell, herding cattle, taking care of the horses. He's just a young scrawny kid. And of course, the rough bullwhackers on these big wagon trains going west took considerable pleasure in tormenting him. Well, he found a defender in a man who was 10 years older than him, James Butler Hickok. And Hickok was a big strapping fellow. You see photos of him. He towers over everyone around him. And he was a tough guy. Eventually, he would ride with what were called the Red Legs in the border wars with Kansas just before the Civil War. And he would become a famous spy, as they were called, and scout during the Civil War and earn his nickname of Wild Bill.

• 15:25Speaker 03

  Often they're confused, Wild Bill, Buffalo Bill. And they became lifelong friends until Hickok eventually meets his fate in Deadwood in 1876. And Hickok is kind of the senior character, and he's the one who gets Cody jobs as a Deputy U.S. Marshal with the Army. And another character of the time who gets identified with Cody is of course, George Armstrong Custer, the boy general of the Civil War, fought in every major battle of the Army of the Potomac. At the age of 25, he's a major general, a two-star general in the Volunteer Army of the United States. He captures the white flag at Appomattox because he's always in the forefront of the troops. So a dashing figure. Well, he comes west.

• 16:09Speaker 03

  And unlike other Army officers, Custer embraces the west. So gone is his velveteen, gold braided uniform, and now he's wearing buckskins. And adapting to the frontier just takes to it. And while others are reminiscing about the Civil War, he writes a book called My Life on the Plains, celebrating his role in the Indian Wars and the conquests of the West. And that's because he, and Cody is the same way, and even Hickok, they all understand the past. They understand Daniel Boone. They understand Davy Crockett. They understand Kit Carson. They've been raised on those stories, especially Carson. He was the great hero of the time when they were coming of age. And so that's what they want to be. They already have a model.

• 16:50Speaker 03

  It's been given to them by those characters in history, but also by James Fenimore Cooper and other writers. And Custer and Cody do not become close friends like Cody is with Hickok, because there's not a room big enough for both of their egos. But they interact several times. And later in his life, when he goes into show business, Cody is going to find an association with Custer to be profitable.

• 17:15Lindsay Graham?

  Let's talk a little bit about the persona that Cody manufactured. You've already mentioned a little bit about where he got his nickname, but tell us a little more about it and who gave it to him, and maybe even the instrument he used to win that moniker.

• 17:29Speaker 03

  Well, young Bill got a job hunting buffalo to feed the workers on the Kansas-Pacific Railroad, which was to be another transcontinental line at the same time that the Union Pacific was pushing across the plains. Eventually, Indian resistance and weather would kind of block the railroad. But for almost two years, Cody hunted for them, killed 4,000 buffalo. And they even composed a little song, you know, Buffalo Bill, Buffalo Bill, never missed and never will, and the company pays his Buffalo Bill. And that's how he got his name. And he didn't hunt buffalo like the Hyde hunters that would come later. By the time the Hyde hunters come and slaughter all the millions of buffalo just for their skins, it's just a terrible, terrible moment in history. He's on the stage.

• 18:14Speaker 03

  He's done with that, and he condemns them. He hunted just like the Indians from horseback with a single-shot Springfield. It was a breech loader, but still, he would reload, fire, reload, fire, holding on to his horse, Brigham, with his knees and using his Springfield conversion rifle. He named Lucretia Borgia after the deadly poisoner, you know, of Italian history. Here at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, we have his actual buckskin outfit that he wore when he was a hunter on the plains. We have Lucretia Borgia and miniguns associated with Cody. So he had a style about him, and he was soon discovered, once he left the railroad work

• 18:56Speaker 03

  and became an Army scout, by an eastern writer named Ned Buntline. And Ned was quite a scoundrel. He was always looking for a good story. And he came west in search of one, and he found this kid, Buffalo Bill. He loved the name, and he thought, I can do something. This kid's really good-looking, and he's got a great story, and he's got an even better name. And Buntline meets him in 1870 and writes a tabloid newspaper story about him that becomes a sensation. And suddenly Buffalo Bill is famous in the East. The story has no relationship to any reality whatsoever. But that's kind of the nature of this myth of the West that is growing up and which Cody is going to exploit to great advantage.

• 19:39Lindsay Graham?

  Let's discuss his time as a scout with the Army. He was in the 5th Cavalry under Major General Phil Sheridan. Tell us a little bit about his time and exploits then.

• 19:49Speaker 03

  Hickok got Cody a job with the Army. And at that time, scouts were hired only for campaigns. But Cody was an incredible dispatch rider and going through very dangerous territory. And he came to the attention of General Phil Sheridan, the great Civil War hero, who now was in command of the southern plains and was engaged in a large-scale campaign against the southern tribes. Sheridan became his patron and his mentor, and he appointed Cody as Chief of Scouts for the 5th Cavalry. But Cody remained with the 5th Cavalry. It wasn't just for a campaign.

• 20:29Speaker 03

  And he actually engaged in more fights with the 5th Cavalry than almost any other soldier did on the plains, because he's always on duty. Receives the Congressional Medal of Honor, engages in a famous battle at Summit Springs in which he kills the leader of the Cheyenne Dog Soldiers, the most dangerous group of warriors. And this increases his fame. And all of these exploits, which are then going to be picked up by Buntline and other writers, are going to bring him to the attention of people in the East. And Sheridan does two big hunts on the western plains, one for a band of millionaires from the East, including James Gordon Bennett, Lawrence and Leonard Jerome, one of whom

• 21:13Speaker 03

  is the grandfather of Winston Churchill. And Cody writes that he put on some style for these people. And he comes riding down into their camp at dawn on a snowy white horse in light buckskins with a red shirt, big broad-brimmed sombrero, his long hair flowing in the wind, really handsome, movie star quality. Brad Pitt's got nothing on him. And all the people just go crazy over him. And same thing happens when the Grand Duke Alexis, the third son of the czar, comes out in 1872 for a big buffalo hunt. And Custer's there on this one as well. And Cody makes sure that the Grand Duke, you know, bags his buffalos.

• 21:57Speaker 03

  And in fact, when the Grand Duke killed his first buffalo, baskets of champagne were brought by his courtiers. And all of this just added to his fame. And back in the East, Ned Buntline's mind was just swirling. He thought he could do something with this kid, and he starts barraging Cody with letters saying, come east, come east. I can make you a star on the stage.

• 22:19Lindsay Graham?

  But before he got there, he did have to deal with the indigenous population that he encountered on the plains. What was his relationship with them? And ultimately, how did he come to view them?

• 22:31Speaker 03

  Cody is involved in all of those early Southern Plains campaigns. And later, he will be involved in the most famous of all the Indian wars, the Great Sioux War, in which Custer and the 7th are wiped out. He has a typical frontiersman attitude toward Indians. And also, it's a war. You kill them, or they will kill you. He, in fact, he adopts the long hair of frontiersmen. The old mountain men always wore their hair long. And it's so you present a scalp that is worthy of taking. I mean, so it's a kind of a come and get me statement. But in these campaigns, he becomes more and more familiar with native peoples. And as he then moves on to the stage, in which he does a lot of Blood and Thunder, you know, fighting Indian stories.

• 23:12Speaker 03

  And then especially when he will establish his Wild West show, he comes to have a completely different attitude. And like many of the other frontiersmen, this applies to Boone, to Crockett, to Carson, he comes to see, my goodness, I really lived on the land just like these people did. I really have more of a community of interest with them than I do with the eastern people that have caused all this conflict. And so he celebrated native life in his Wild West show. He had Sitting Bull for one season, and he and Sitting Bull became great friends. He paid his native performers very well. They were almost all Lakota. And he really looked after them. And what a wonderful means of employment for these kids from the reservation.

• 23:54Speaker 03

  Do you want to stay at Ponridge, or you want to go to Paris and Rome? I mean, that's not a tough decision. And he completely changes his attitude. He defends Sitting Bull over the Custer fight, says that they were defending their families, they had no choice but to fight, and that, you know, you can't blame them. Now, did he realize that native peoples were going to be dispossessed, their land was going to be taken, and that they had to adapt to the dominant culture? Yes, of course he did. And the Wild West show was, in fact, very much a tale of progress. And the Indian performers, you know, chased the stagecoach. He would recreate Custer's Last Stand. So many of the tropes and conventions that would later come with the Western film and literature came out of that show.

• 24:37Speaker 03

  But at the same time, people were treated with real dignity. So he had a sea change in terms of his attitude toward native peoples.

• 24:44Lindsay Graham?

  You've mentioned how Ned Buntline wooed Cody east. But how did he get from being written about to starring in and promoting his own show?

• 24:54Speaker 03

  Well, Phil Sheridan, after the Millionaire's Hunt, when Cody had been invited by James Gordon Bennett to come back and visit New York as his guest, gave him a leave of absence and said, Bill, go east, you know, you'll never have a better chance to meet these people. Things are calm here on the plains for a while. And so that's exactly what Cody did. And he ran into Ned Buntline back in New York, even though he was the guest of all these fabulously wealthy men. And Ned took him to a stage show where Ned's tabloid story, Buffalo Bill, was being performed. The actor's name was Studley, you can't make this up. And he saw that Bill was in the audience, and he said, ladies and gentlemen, here's the real Buffalo Bill, come up on the stage. And Bill went up there, he was so scared, he says his knees were knocking, he couldn't

• 25:39Speaker 03

  even say anything, he was so stage-struck. The audience went crazy, the theater manager said, kid, I'll give you $500 a week to play yourself. And Cody thought this was a joke. And so he goes back west. Well, Buntline just keeps barraging him with letters. And so he recruits a buddy of his, Texas Jack Amahondro, a Civil War veteran on the other side, fought for the South, who was a scout with him at Ork McPherson. And they go east. And Buntline writes a play. Took him a weekend to write it. Critics later said, why did it take him so long? It was just horrible. And it didn't matter, because the scouts were handsome, and they hired a famous Italian actress to play the Indian heroine.

• 26:22Speaker 03

  She eventually married Texas Jack, and she was fetching. The action was nonstop. Buntline hired folks off the streets of Chicago to play the Indians, who would be shot in one act, get up, and then be shot again in the next act. I mean, he's just total fluff, hugely, hugely successful. So successful that, in fact, Cody doesn't need Buntline anymore, hires writers to write plays for him, and he's going to spend 10 years on the boards with various frontier dramas, and incredibly successful. It's going to make him a household name here in the United States.

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• 28:04Lindsay Graham?

  On January 1st, 1892, a young Irish immigrant named Annie Moore became the first person processed at the new immigration station on Ellis Island. For the millions who followed her, this small island in New York Harbor would become the place where their American dream would either begin or end. Hi, I'm Lindsay Graham, the host of the podcast American History Tellers. We take you to the events, times, and people that shaped America and Americans, our values, our struggles, and our dreams. In our latest series, we trace the history of Ellis Island. For more than three decades, it served as the gateway through which millions of hopeful immigrants entered the United States. But as the nation struggled to decide who belonged, some would find the gate shut to them. Follow American History Tellers wherever you get your podcasts.

• 28:48Lindsay Graham?

  Audible subscribers can binge all episodes of American History Tellers early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts. So what was the big idea behind Buffalo Bill, Cody's Wild West show?

• 29:09Speaker 03

  Cody just had big ideas for show business. He's kind of a combination of P.T. Barnum as a showman and Walt Disney as an influencer, because he's going to change the nature of show business, and he's going to change the image of America through his Wild West show. Now, he had done a big rodeo in Nebraska that had been very successful, and he thought to himself, well, people can't come to the West, which is passing, you know, the old days are gone. I need to come up with something bigger. He finally hooks up with a show business impresario named Nate Salisbury. And Salisbury has the business sense, and Cody has the show business sense. And Salisbury's an old hand, too, at the show business.

• 29:54Speaker 03

  And they put together Buffalo Bill's Wild West, eventually becomes Buffalo Bill's Wild West, and Congress of Rough Riders of the world. Yes, Teddy Roosevelt gets the name of the Rough Riders from Buffalo Bill's show. And from 1883 on, for 30 years, it's going to play across America and throughout Europe. And it's going to establish the image of the American West. It's going to make the cowboy into the icon of America. And he changes the show up all the time. He's a brilliant showman. He brings, you know, Sitting Bull in to the show. At this time, Sitting Bull had just come back from Canada. He had finally surrendered. And he was interested in show business because of Annie Oakley.

• 30:38Speaker 03

  He had heard about her, and he had actually met her when he was on tour in Minnesota. And he gave her the name Little Sure Shot. And so the way Cody got Sitting Bull to agree to come into his show was to say, you'll be a headliner along with Annie Oakley. And Annie Oakley and Sitting Bull became fast friends. We recently here at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West just acquired the contract that Sitting Bull signed to play in the Wild West show. And he was presented with dignity in the show. And the show business arena area was actually almost like a park, almost like Disneyland. And you would go there, and the native folks, they brought their families with them.

• 31:20Speaker 03

  They would sell all kinds of goods, beadwork, moccasins, and make extra money doing that. Could you imagine the value of some of those items today? And over the years, he brought in Hispanic actors, he brought in Cossacks, he brought in African actors. Even near the end of the show, had a ragtime band that did the entree and out music. So he's always changing it up. And one of the most interesting things, too, is there was an equality of the company. Everyone ate together, they ate well, in one big mess hall. Black people, white people, Asian people, Native American people, Hispanics, all part of the troupe. It really was foreshadowing our America in that show, while he also created an image of America.

• 32:05Speaker 03

  Because show's very much a historical tableau with exciting incidents like Custer's Last Stand. And he would always recreate a famous incident that happened during the Great Sioux War, the first scalp for Custer, in which he had engaged in a single-handed duel with a Cheyenne warrior, killed him, took his scalp, raised it up, declared it to be the first scalp for Custer in the army, chased the Cheyennes back to the reservation so they couldn't join Sitting Bull's people. He puts that all in an arena show and captivates the world.

• 32:36Lindsay Graham?

  I'm curious, you've described a lot of what's in the show and bits and pieces, but what was the actual experience like? If I show up, I assume I buy a ticket, I'm escorted into what? What do I see?

• 32:48Speaker 03

  Huge arena. Now, first, you've seen the parade. The whole troupe goes through town in a grand parade led by Cody, and everyone's excited now. And then there would be bucking horses and roping tricks, sharpshooting exhibitions, recreations of historical events, the Battle of Summit Springs, Custer's Last Stand. And later, as the show ran, it ran for 30 years, he would add things like the charge up San Juan Hill, in which he had Buffalo soldiers recreating their part in the Spanish-American War, as well as Rough Riders from Teddy Roosevelt's regiment. Even later, he would do the Great Train Robbery, that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid pulled off in Wyoming. And they did scenes from the Boxer Rebellion. And

• 33:31Speaker 03

  this idea of the Congress of Rough Riders of the world, you would have parades of the different countries doing, you know, riding tricks. And of course, you had trick riders all the time, both women and men. Annie Oakley, of course, Johnny Baker, who was another shooting expert, and Cody himself. He would do a mock Buffalo hunt. He would do the rescue of the stagecoach being attacked by Indians. All of these conventions became part of Western novels, Western films. They're going to last into our own time. I mean, Taylor Sheridan, as well as John Ford earlier, they're all disciples of Buffalo Bill. They're all the children of Buffalo Bill, bringing the story of the West to the East. And that's exactly what he wanted to do. He brought the Wild West to the East and to Europe.

• 34:14Speaker 03

  He's had such an incredible influence in Europe. In 1887, they played a command performance at Earl's Court for Queen Victoria. And Buffalo Bill and a contingent of cowboys and Indians rode forward with the American flag, and she rose and bowed her head to the American flag. And the Indians let up a war whoop, and the cowboys went yip, yip. And it seemed as if America had come of age, and certainly culturally, we had conquered Europe.

• 34:44Lindsay Graham?

  So the Queen was not the only royal to attend one of Cody's performances. Who else was there?

• 34:49Speaker 03

  Oh, my goodness, at the various command performances in London during that spectacular season, when Cody's show sort of captured the imagination of England. I mean, it was just total sensation. Many of the crown heads and princes of Europe came, including the Prince of Wales. And Cody took them all for a spin in the stagecoach. Prince of Wales, the future Kaiser Bill of World War I fame, was there, King of Belgium, just an incredible crowd. Cody compared it to a poker hand, having four kings, you know, in his coach. And the show would play all over Europe in the years to come. Oh, and I should mention in England, one visitor to the show who played hooky from his private school was Winston

• 35:34Speaker 03

  Churchill, who saw Buffalo Bill's show and was captivated, of course, by it, as were all the children of Europe. Paris, Rome, Berlin, Budapest, he met the Pope. He rode in a gondola with several of the Lakota performers. It's a famous photograph. And so Cody is a goodwill ambassador for America as no one has been since Benjamin Franklin captivated the French during the time of the American Revolution.

• 36:02Lindsay Graham?

  So this show ran for 30 years. What happened to it and Buffalo Bill himself?

• 36:09Speaker 03

  Well, you eventually reach critical mass. Dad has seen the show, Junior's seen the show, the grandkids have seen the show. He tried to update it all the time, but still, folks had seen it. The arena show was going out of style. Motion pictures are coming in. And Cody actually tried his hand at motion pictures and made two of them, but they didn't catch on. These new forms of entertainment provided competition to the arena show that just couldn't be overcome. And the arena show was so expensive to put on. Toward the end, he combined with an old friend, Gordon Lilly, called Pawnee Bill, and they did Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Pawnee Bill's Far East. They brought in performers

• 36:51Speaker 03

  from Asia and the Middle East for that show. But the show was mortgaged heavily. And Harry Tammon, the buccaneering capitalist of Denver, the owner of the Denver Post, held the mortgage, and he finally in 1913 called it in because he owned the Sells Floto Circus that was a competitor. So he bankrupted Buffalo Bill's show. And then he made Bill kind of an indentured servant to him to pay off the debt to work on the Sells Floto Circus. So it was a very sad end to the show. By this time, he's in ill health. He's in his 70s. So he performs with Sells Floto, then he performs with the 101 Ranch, and it's always the last performance

• 37:33Speaker 03

  of Buffalo Bill, or the last performance on horseback, the last performance in a wagon. And so it was kind of a sad end to a marvelous career. He dies in Denver in 1917. It's a different world. He's lived from 1846 to 1917, from covered wagons to airplanes, skyscrapers, the automobile, motion pictures. It's, it's a new world, and he's the vestige of the old. And when he dies, the country looks at itself and reflects on just how far it has come in so short time, and what a marvel the modern age is. And Bill is but a nostalgic figure of a dead past.

• 38:16Lindsay Graham?

  Throughout this conversation, you've made mention that much of our conception of the Wild West and other entertainment came from Buffalo Bill Cody. Was that the limit of his significance?

• 38:30Speaker 03

  Oh, no. I think his influence on show business is incredible. I mean, and what you've got to remember with Cody, and it's one of the things we try to show, you know, here at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, is both the frontier period, that formative period, as well as the show business period. But show business kind of took over his reputation. And of course, much of that comes from, you know, the famous Broadway musical, Annie Get Your Gun, later made into a film with Betty Hutton, no relative. That changed the image of Cody from a handsome, young frontiersman to the old, kind of fatherly figure, sequined showman. And that's his image, you know, that kind of comes down to us. But his influence

• 39:11Speaker 03

  is far beyond that. He really is part of a movement to establish the West as the story of America. And he's working kind of in tandem with the great historian Frederick Jackson Turner. In 1893, they both play Chicago. Cody's playing at the World's Fair. Turner's giving a little paper at the first meeting of the American Historical Association there in Chicago, the significance of the frontier in American history. Well, Turner's going to change the whole academic conversation about the origins of the American character and American exceptionalism. Why are we different? What makes us different from Europe? And he says, it's the West, and it's the movement of the West across successive frontiers.

• 39:55Speaker 03

  It shapes the distinct American character. He's going to win the academic battle. Soon there will be Western history programs all across the United States in colleges, and they still exist today. Cody's going to win the popular culture war. So the two of them kind of helped to shape the American ideal of who are we as a people? And we know we're a people from all over the globe, from Africa, from Asia, from Europe, from Latin America. But what's the glue? It's the story of the American West. You could see it in Buffalo Bill's show. And for the intellectual crowd, they could read about it in Turner's essay. And then Teddy Roosevelt's going to take it into the White House in 1901 as our first

• 40:37Speaker 03

  cowboy president. And he's going to bring that frontier energy into the White House. And at the very same time, he brings that nostalgia that is central to the Wild West show into his movement for conservation. The West has been won. Now what? We need to step back. We need to reflect on what we've done, and we need to correct some of our errors. For instance, he's so involved in the restoration of the great buffalo herds. And Cody is too. And the little herd that Cody had with his Wild West show provided some of the genetic core for the restoration of the buffalo herds, which you know is now very successful. There's over 400,000 buffalo. Now, this is just a bittance of the millions

• 41:20Speaker 03

  that once roamed the plains, but certainly it's one of the great conservation stories of all time. And part of that comes out of this idea that the West offers you freedom. I must tell you, when I walk outside where I live here in Cody, Wyoming, and I see that sky and the mountains, the clouds, you know, racing across, pushed by the wind, there's just such a feeling of freedom. And that's what the West represents for America.

• 41:47Lindsay Graham?

  Well, Dr. Paul Hutton, thank you so much for speaking with me today on American History Tellers.

• 41:52Speaker 03

  Well, it's been my pleasure. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

• 41:55Lindsay Graham?

  That was my conversation with Dr. Paul Hutton, Tate Chair of Western History in the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Cody, Wyoming, and author of the New York Times bestseller, The Undiscovered Country: Triumph, Tragedy, and the Shaping of the American West. On the next episode, we're bringing back a fan favorite, our series on Stonewall. For decades, gay men and women in America faced two choices. They could be out and risk losing everything, or they could be invisible. But one night in 1969, after police once again raided a popular gay bar in New York City, the patrons decided they'd had enough. The six days of protests that followed would become known as the Stonewall Riots, a turning

• 42:38Lindsay Graham?

  point in the gay rights movement that would inspire people across the country to fight for equality. American History Tellers is only possible because of listeners like you. So thank you. And don't miss an episode. Be sure to follow American History Tellers on Audible or wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge new seasons of American History Tellers early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts. And to find out more about me, including my other podcasts, my live show, the history tours I'm arranging, and all sorts of other things, go to historyishuman.com. That's historyishuman.com.

• 43:23Lindsay Graham?

  American History Tellers is hosted, edited, and produced by me, Lindsay Graham, for airship. This episode was produced by Polly Striker. Senior producers, Alida Rosansky and Andy Herman. Managing producer, Desi Blalock. Music by Throm. Sound design by Molly Bach. Executive producer for Audible, Jenny Lauer Beckman. Head of creative development at Audible, Kate Navid. Head of Audible Originals North America, Marshall Louis. Chief Content Officer, Rachel Giannetta. Copyright 2026 by Audible Originals LLC. Sound recording copyright 2026 by Audible Originals LLC.

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