Buffalo Bill, the Dime Novel, and the Western Hero

1. Buffalo Bill, the Dime Novel, and the Western Hero

2. Preliminary Questions What are the characteristics of the Western hero? Why would such a figure be appealing to white Americans in the period 1870-1910? (What �cultural work� does the Western cowboy myth perform?) How does the mythic West of this time period differ from reality? How does approaching the mythic West through a variety of cultural forms help us to understand its significance? What are the class, racial, and gender accents of the Western frontier myth?

3. More and more as the years go by this Republic will find its guidance in the thought and action of the West, because the conditions of development in the West have steadily tended to accentuate the peculiarly American characteristics of its people. --Theodore Roosevelt, �Manhood and Statehood,� 1901 The West as the Locus of Americanism:

4. From the conditions of frontier life came intellectual traits of profound importance. . . .That coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism, working for good and for evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom--these are traits of the frontier, or traits called out elsewhere because of the existence of the frontier. Since the days when the fleet of Columbus sailed into the waters of the New World, America has been another name for opportunity, and the people of the United States have taken their tone from the incessant expansion which has not only been open but has even been forced upon them. . . [N]ever again will such gifts of free land offer themselves. For a moment, at the frontier, the bonds of custom are broken and unrestraint is triumphant. . . . And now, four centuries from the discovery of America, at the end of a hundred years of life under the Constitution, the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history. Frederick Jackson Turner, The Significance of the Frontier in American History. 1893. Turner, "Significance of the Frontier" In 1893, a young historian named Frederick Jackson Turner gave a speech at the Chicago World Fair in which he claimed that there no longer existed an American frontier, that all the land had been settled. His paper argued that the process of moving from the East to the West shaped the American character. In other words, Turner wrote that by moving from settled to unsettled land, Americans shed the ''European'' part of themselves, and became American in the process. Read the excerpt below from Turner�s paper. Then, read how two historians interpret Turner�s claims. The exploitation of the beasts took hunter and trader to the west, the exploitation of the grasses took the rancher west, and the exploitation of the virgin soil of the river valleys and prairies attracted the farmer. Good soils have been the most continuous attraction to the farmer's frontier. The land hunger of the Virginians drew them down the rivers into Carolina, in early colonial days; the search for soils took the Massachusetts men to Pennsylvania and to New York. As the eastern lands were taken up migration flowed across them to the west. . . . From the conditions of frontier life came intellectual traits of profound importance. . . .That coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism, working for good and for evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom--these are traits of the frontier, or traits called out elsewhere because of the existence of the frontier. Since the days when the fleet of Columbus sailed into the waters of the New World, America has been another name for opportunity, and the people of the United States have taken their tone from the incessant expansion which has not only been open but has even been forced upon them. . . . [N]ever again will such gifts of free land offer themselves. For a moment, at the frontier, the bonds of custom are broken and unrestraint is triumphant. . . . And now, four centuries from the discovery of America, at the end of a hundred years of life under the Constitution, the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history. Source: Turner, Frederick Jackson. The Significance of the Frontier in American History. 1893. Turner, "Significance of the Frontier" In 1893, a young historian named Frederick Jackson Turner gave a speech at the Chicago World Fair in which he claimed that there no longer existed an American frontier, that all the land had been settled. His paper argued that the process of moving from the East to the West shaped the American character. In other words, Turner wrote that by moving from settled to unsettled land, Americans shed the ''European'' part of themselves, and became American in the process. Read the excerpt below from Turner�s paper. Then, read how two historians interpret Turner�s claims. The exploitation of the beasts took hunter and trader to the west, the exploitation of the grasses took the rancher west, and the exploitation of the virgin soil of the river valleys and prairies attracted the farmer. Good soils have been the most continuous attraction to the farmer's frontier. The land hunger of the Virginians drew them down the rivers into Carolina, in early colonial days; the search for soils took the Massachusetts men to Pennsylvania and to New York. As the eastern lands were taken up migration flowed across them to the west. . . . From the conditions of frontier life came intellectual traits of profound importance. . . .That coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism, working for good and for evil, and withal that buoyancy and exuberance which comes with freedom--these are traits of the frontier, or traits called out elsewhere because of the existence of the frontier. Since the days when the fleet of Columbus sailed into the waters of the New World, America has been another name for opportunity, and the people of the United States have taken their tone from the incessant expansion which has not only been open but has even been forced upon them. . . . [N]ever again will such gifts of free land offer themselves. For a moment, at the frontier, the bonds of custom are broken and unrestraint is triumphant. . . . And now, four centuries from the discovery of America, at the end of a hundred years of life under the Constitution, the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history. Source: Turner, Frederick Jackson. The Significance of the Frontier in American History. 1893.

5. In his essay, [Frederick Jackson] Turner makes two significant rhetorical moves . . . First, he details the settlement pattern of the region in the West that he specifies as the frontier, immediately then declaring the frontier gone; and second, he asserts that the future of the country will be �decided in the West� . . . Once the frontier is an historical relic, it can become a space for historical reconstruction through nostalgia for its existence. Thus, Turner�s rhetorical moves open a space for the mythologization of the American West and one of its primary inhabitants: the American cowboy. Moskovitz, �The Cultural Myth of the Cowboy�

6. [I]n The American Adam: Innocence, Tragedy and Tradition in the Nineteenth Century, R.W.B. Lewis coined the term �American Adam� in reference to the cowboy and noted, �It is the birth of an archetypal, still finely individualized character, which [D.H.] Lawrence identifies as �the essential American soul�an isolate, almost selfless, stoic, enduring man�� . . . . . . in the American imagination the . . . cowboy came to be perceived as a uniquely American creation. Hence, the mythological construction of the cowboy, built on the foundation of the medieval English knight, was a crucial element in the creation of nationalist sentiment in post-Civil War America. Moskovitz, �The Cultural Myth of the Cowboy�

7. Indeed . . . the historical cowboy bears little resemblance to the literary one. Thomas Gasque explores the historical cowboy, finding that he was often Latino or black, and if Anglo was of a lower economic class. . . . Milton, too, states that �Conveniently forgotten were the Mexican vaquero, the Argentinean gaucho, the Venezuelan llanero, and the Chilean buaso, also Americans in the broadest geographical sense of the term but considered cultural foreigners, if considered at all� . . . These groups were not part of the mythologization process, which was limited to the chivalric, Anglo cowboy who was, ironically, �American.� --Moskovitz the cowboy was a mercenary of sorts whose primary task was to protect the property (both animal and land) of the rancher for whom he worked. He was not by definition �chivalric,� did not have a �code� other than to protect what he was paid to protect (16-18), and believe it or not, did not necessarily play the harmonica by the fire on long, cold nights. A horse, though, was as essential to the cowboy as it was to the knight (18). Cowboys' shifting reputation Cowboys were not always regarded as American heroes. In fact, as late as the 1880s, the were regarded as violent and uncontrollable. The passage below describes a shift in how the public perceived cowboys. Think about what might have accounted for that shift. Drovers, as they were originally called, suffered early on a most disreputable reputation. The cowboys "had a reckless disregard of any restraint not imposed by himself," wrote a contemporary from the East, controlled only by "the necessity for growth of law and order to protect people in the West.'' People to fear, cowboys were shiftless, unsavory, rough-hewn, unkempt. . . . "Throughout the East, the name 'cowboy' is looked upon as a synonym for lawlessness and cussedness," editorialized the Bismarck (D.T.) Tribune. . . . "[A cowboy is] often held in disfavor by the general population as a rough, uncouth, and possibly lawless man." Disdain reached to the highest level: in 1881 President Chester Arthur in his address to Congress used the term "cowboys" to describe "armed desperadoes" blocking peaceful settlement of Arizona Territory. Twenty years later another president, Roosevelt, was a "cowboy." The cowboy had become a "knight on horseback," the symbol for "courage, honor, chivalry, individualism." . . . An influential contemporary interpreter of the cattle industry, Joseph Nimmo, wrote [in 1886] that cowboys, while originally reputed to be ruffians, were improving and were generally "true and trusty men" who "have done much toward subduing a vast area to the arts of peace.". . . Source: Collins, Ross. F. ''Newspapers in Dakota Territory.'' Cowboys and Cow Town. Vol. 3. No. 1. http://www.scripps.ohiou.edu/mediahistory/mhmjour3-1.htm. Downloaded August 15, 2006. the cowboy was a mercenary of sorts whose primary task was to protect the property (both animal and land) of the rancher for whom he worked. He was not by definition �chivalric,� did not have a �code� other than to protect what he was paid to protect (16-18), and believe it or not, did not necessarily play the harmonica by the fire on long, cold nights. A horse, though, was as essential to the cowboy as it was to the knight (18). Cowboys' shifting reputation Cowboys were not always regarded as American heroes. In fact, as late as the 1880s, the were regarded as violent and uncontrollable. The passage below describes a shift in how the public perceived cowboys. Think about what might have accounted for that shift. Drovers, as they were originally called, suffered early on a most disreputable reputation. The cowboys "had a reckless disregard of any restraint not imposed by himself," wrote a contemporary from the East, controlled only by "the necessity for growth of law and order to protect people in the West.'' People to fear, cowboys were shiftless, unsavory, rough-hewn, unkempt. . . . "Throughout the East, the name 'cowboy' is looked upon as a synonym for lawlessness and cussedness," editorialized the Bismarck (D.T.) Tribune. . . . "[A cowboy is] often held in disfavor by the general population as a rough, uncouth, and possibly lawless man." Disdain reached to the highest level: in 1881 President Chester Arthur in his address to Congress used the term "cowboys" to describe "armed desperadoes" blocking peaceful settlement of Arizona Territory. Twenty years later another president, Roosevelt, was a "cowboy." The cowboy had become a "knight on horseback," the symbol for "courage, honor, chivalry, individualism." . . . An influential contemporary interpreter of the cattle industry, Joseph Nimmo, wrote [in 1886] that cowboys, while originally reputed to be ruffians, were improving and were generally "true and trusty men" who "have done much toward subduing a vast area to the arts of peace.". . . Source: Collins, Ross. F. ''Newspapers in Dakota Territory.'' Cowboys and Cow Town. Vol. 3. No. 1. http://www.scripps.ohiou.edu/mediahistory/mhmjour3-1.htm. Downloaded August 15, 2006.

8. The Dime Novel Set up new relations between publishers, audiences, and authors Inexpensively produced Appealed to working-class readers, then to boys Stories produced as series around central heroes Tended to be patriotic, even chauvinistic, in their story lines Some scholars argue that dime novel westerns appealed most to young, working-class men � the mythic West of the cowboy as a place where class boundaries so marked in the industrializing East and Midwest did not prevail Dime novelists helped to popularize the cowboy myth, but as Richard Slotkin notes, had earlier precedents in American literature � tales about Davy Crockett and Cooper�s Leatherstocking tales See Moskovitz: The cowboy figure arose out of long literary tradition of frontiersmen that informed his character. Richard Slotkin, in Regeneration through Violence, demonstrates the beginnings of the American myth by carefully tracing the early figure, focusing on the influences of John Filson�s creation of Daniel Boone in 1784 and, building on Filson, James Fenimore Cooper�s The Leatherstocking Tales (1823) (importance also noted in Milton 7-9, 84-87). Interpretation of dime novel western� What the mythic Frontier of the dime novel actually embodies is a world in which the values and practices of the pre-industrial order are given renewed life: a place in which machines still stand in gardens and [where everyone is a worker].Some scholars argue that dime novel westerns appealed most to young, working-class men � the mythic West of the cowboy as a place where class boundaries so marked in the industrializing East and Midwest did not prevail Dime novelists helped to popularize the cowboy myth, but as Richard Slotkin notes, had earlier precedents in American literature � tales about Davy Crockett and Cooper�s Leatherstocking tales See Moskovitz: The cowboy figure arose out of long literary tradition of frontiersmen that informed his character. Richard Slotkin, in Regeneration through Violence, demonstrates the beginnings of the American myth by carefully tracing the early figure, focusing on the influences of John Filson�s creation of Daniel Boone in 1784 and, building on Filson, James Fenimore Cooper�s The Leatherstocking Tales (1823) (importance also noted in Milton 7-9, 84-87). Interpretation of dime novel western� What the mythic Frontier of the dime novel actually embodies is a world in which the values and practices of the pre-industrial order are given renewed life: a place in which machines still stand in gardens and [where everyone is a worker].

9. Dime Novel Authorship Dime novel authors worked according to formulas Publishing houses copyrighted pen names Some authors objected to the regimentation and industrialization of their work as writers

10. Beadle�s Weekly Produced action and adventure stories By 1880s, the target audience for Beadle�s Weekly was boys Buffalo Bill series was intended to appeal to a young, male audience

11. Questions about �The Adventures of Buffalo Bill� Why might this story have been popular with late-nineteenth-century American youth? In the story, how does Buffalo Bill pass �from boyhood to manhood�? How does Ingraham depict life on the frontier? As Americans began to mourn the "closing of the frontier," they simultaneously began to celebrate the cowboy, who quickly became the hero of the mythic West. It may have been the emergence of modern America, with its urbanization and industrialization, that sparked an additional interest among its people for a past that was more direct, more simple, more easily understood. The nation had, some held, grown too fast, had lost something in that process; and now there was a yearning to return to that fast-disappearing life on the soil. As Americans began to mourn the "closing of the frontier," they simultaneously began to celebrate the cowboy, who quickly became the hero of the mythic West. It may have been the emergence of modern America, with its urbanization and industrialization, that sparked an additional interest among its people for a past that was more direct, more simple, more easily understood. The nation had, some held, grown too fast, had lost something in that process; and now there was a yearning to return to that fast-disappearing life on the soil.

12. �Billy!� cried the road agent. �Yes, I am Buffalo Billy, and I assumed this disguise to catch you and I�ve done it.� �Do you love me now, pard?� The road agent foamed and swore; but it was no use; he had been caught, was taken to the town, tried, found guilty of murdering and robbing and ended his life on the gallows, and Buffalo Billy got the reward for his capture, and a medal from the company, and he certainly deserved all that he received for his daring exploit in the guise of a young girl, and a pretty one too, the boys said he made, for he had no mustache then. His complexion was perfect, though bronzed, and his waist was as small as a woman�s, while in the saddle his hight did not show. 10

13. But while on the way he came in sight of a pleasant farm-house, from which came a cry of help from the voice of a woman. Billy saw five horses hitched to a fence on the other side of the house; but this array of numbers did not deter him when a woman called for aid, and dismounting quickly, he bounded upon the piazza, and was just running into the door when a man came out into the hall and fired at him, but fortunately missed him. Bill instantly returned the fire, and his quick, unerring aim sent a bullet into the man�s brain. 12 Dime novel western as a means of social containment: The outlaw becomes a hero who resists the forces of order, but in a way that affirms the basic values of American society; the detective defends the progressive social order, but does so in the style of an outlaw. . . . For the facts of social conflict the mass-culture mythology substitutes a persuasive vision of an ultimate reconciliation between irreconcilable opposites: . . . farmers and landlords, workers and employers, outlaws and detectives, Jesse James and Allen Pinkerton, all abandon the pursuit of their interests to discover and share their common ground.Dime novel western as a means of social containment: The outlaw becomes a hero who resists the forces of order, but in a way that affirms the basic values of American society; the detective defends the progressive social order, but does so in the style of an outlaw. . . . For the facts of social conflict the mass-culture mythology substitutes a persuasive vision of an ultimate reconciliation between irreconcilable opposites: . . . farmers and landlords, workers and employers, outlaws and detectives, Jesse James and Allen Pinkerton, all abandon the pursuit of their interests to discover and share their common ground.

14. The outlaw becomes a hero who resists the forces of order, but in a way that affirms the basic values of American society; the detective defends the progressive social order, but does so in the style of an outlaw. . . . For the facts of social conflict the mass-culture mythology substitutes a persuasive vision of an ultimate reconciliation between irreconcilable opposites: . . . farmers and landlords, workers and employers, outlaws and detectives, Jesse James and Allen Pinkerton, all abandon the pursuit of their interests to discover and share their common ground. Richard Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation. New York: Maxwell MacMillan International, 1992. 145-6, 154. The Western�s strategy for social containment:

15. William Cody Scout and frontiersman In 1869, Ned Buntline undertook to fictionalize William Cody�s life 1869 marks beginning of the Western as a genre in American culture A popular fascination with the disappearing frontier laid the foundation of the Western's success. Former Indian scout Buffalo Bill Cody capitalized on this interest when he brought the Wild West east in 1883. With a cast of 100 cowboys and Indians, sharpshooter Annie Oakley, and a menagerie of wild animals, Buffalo Bill's Wild West paraded and played for packed audiences into the twentieth century. A popular fascination with the disappearing frontier laid the foundation of the Western's success. Former Indian scout Buffalo Bill Cody capitalized on this interest when he brought the Wild West east in 1883. With a cast of 100 cowboys and Indians, sharpshooter Annie Oakley, and a menagerie of wild animals, Buffalo Bill's Wild West paraded and played for packed audiences into the twentieth century.

16. Cody after Buntline Cody and Buntline have a falling out in 1870s Cody continues to promote himself as a national hero Stages his life in New York and elsewhere, commercializing the �real� West for urban, Eastern audiences

17. �First scalp for Custer� episode, 1876 Cody scalping Yellow Hair following Custer�s last stand, 1876Cody scalping Yellow Hair following Custer�s last stand, 1876

18. Characteristics of the Western Hero Brings together the civilized and the savage A skilled frontiersman Stands for honesty, but does not shrink from violence A fraternal figure, ensconced in a male world Contrasted with the urban dandy Not to be domesticated; hates school Devoted to mother, but not to any single woman of own age Never makes money A natural aristocrat � civil and chivalrous, not a roughneck

19. Buffalo Bill�s Wild West one of the largest and most successful businesses in American commercial entertainment, 1883-1916 Show also toured internationally Born in Scott County, Iowa, in 1846, Cody grew up on the prairie. When his father died in 1857, his mother moved to Kansas, where Cody worked for a wagon-freight company as a mounted messenger and wrangler. In 1859, he tried his luck as a prospector in the Pikes Peak gold rush, and the next year, joined the Pony Express, which had advertised for "skinny, expert riders willing to risk death daily." Already a seasoned plainsman at age 14, Cody fit the bill. During the Civil War, Cody served first as a Union scout in campaigns against the Kiowa and Comanche, then in 1863 he enlisted with the Seventh Kansas Cavalry, which saw action in Missouri and Tennessee. After the war, he married Louisa Frederici in St. Louis and continued to work for the Army as a scout and dispatch carrier, operating out of Fort Ellsworth, Kansas. Finally, in 1867, Cody took up the trade that gave him his nickname, hunting buffalo to feed the construction crews of the Kansas Pacific Railroad. By his own count, he killed 4,280 head of buffalo in seventeen months. He is supposed to have won the name "Buffalo Bill" in an eight-hour shooting match with a hunter named William Comstock, presumably to determine which of the two Buffalo Bill�s deserved the title. Beginning in 1868, Cody returned to his work for the Army. He was chief of scouts for the Fifth Cavalry and took part in 16 battles, including the Cheyenne defeat at Summit Springs, Colorado, in 1869. For his service over these years, he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in 1872, although this award was revoked in 1916 on the grounds that Cody was not a regular member of the armed forces at the time. (The award was restored posthumously in 1989). All the while Cody was earning a reputation for skill and bravery in real life, he was also becoming a national folk hero, thanks to the exploits of his alter ego, "Buffalo Bill," in the dime novels of Ned Buntline (pen name of the writer E. Z. C. Judson). Beginning in 1869, Buntline created a Buffalo Bill who ranked with Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone and Kit Carson in the popular imagination, and who was, like them, a mixture of incredible fact and romantic fiction. In 1872 Buntline persuaded Cody to assume this role on stage by starring in his play, The Scouts of the Plains, and though Cody was never a polished actor, he proved a natural showman, winning enthusiastic applause for his good-humored self-portrayal. Despite a falling out with Buntline, Cody remained an actor for eleven seasons, and became an author as well, producing the first edition of his autobiography in 1879 and publishing a number of his own Buffalo Bill dime novels. Eventually, there would be some 1,700 of these frontier tales, the majority written by Prentiss Ingraham. But not even show business success could keep Cody from returning to the West. Between theater seasons, he regularly escorted rich Easterners and European nobility on Western hunting expeditions, and in 1876 he was called back to service as an army scout in the campaign that followed Custer�s defeat at the Little Bighorn. On this occasion, Cody added a new chapter to his legend in a "duel" with the Cheyenne chief Yellow Hair, whom he supposedly first shot with a rifle, then stabbed in the heart and finally scalped "in about five seconds," according to his own account. Others described the encounter as hand-to-hand combat, and misreported the chief�s name as Yellow Hand. Still others said that Cody merely lifted the chief�s scalp after he had died in battle. Whatever actually occurred, Cody characteristically had the event embroidered into a melodrama--Buffalo Bill's First Scalp for Custer--for the fall theater season. Cody�s own theatrical genius revealed itself in 1883, when he organized Buffalo Bill�s Wild West, an outdoor extravaganza that dramatized some of the most picturesque elements of frontier life: a buffalo hunt with real buffalos, an Indian attack on the Deadwood stage with real Indians, a Pony Express ride, and at the climax, a tableau presentation of Custer�s Last Stand in which some Lakota who had actually fought in the battle played a part. Half circus and half history lesson, mixing sentimentality with sensationalism, the show proved an enormous success, touring the country for three decades and playing to enthusiastic crowds across Europe. In later years Buffalo Bill�s Wild West would star the sharpshooter Annie Oakley, the first "King of the Cowboys," Buck Taylor, and for one season, "the slayer of General Custer," Chief Sitting Bull. Cody even added an international flavor by assembling a "Congress of Rough Riders of the World" that included cossacks, lancers and other Old World cavalrymen along with the vaqueros, cowboys and Indians of the American West. Though he was by this time almost wholly absorbed in his celebrity existence as Buffalo Bill, Cody still had a real-life reputation in the West, and in 1890 he was called back by the army once more during the Indian uprisings associated with the Ghost Dance. He came with some Indians from his troupe who proved effective peacemakers, and even traveled to Wounded Knee after the massacre to help restore order. Cody made a fortune from his show business success and lost it to mismanagement and a weakness for dubious investment schemes. In the end, even the Wild West show itself was lost to creditors. Cody died on January 10, 1917, and is buried in a tomb blasted from solid rock at the summit of Lookout Mountain near Denver, Colorado. http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/a_c/buffalobill.htmBorn in Scott County, Iowa, in 1846, Cody grew up on the prairie. When his father died in 1857, his mother moved to Kansas, where Cody worked for a wagon-freight company as a mounted messenger and wrangler. In 1859, he tried his luck as a prospector in the Pikes Peak gold rush, and the next year, joined the Pony Express, which had advertised for "skinny, expert riders willing to risk death daily." Already a seasoned plainsman at age 14, Cody fit the bill. During the Civil War, Cody served first as a Union scout in campaigns against the Kiowa and Comanche, then in 1863 he enlisted with the Seventh Kansas Cavalry, which saw action in Missouri and Tennessee. After the war, he married Louisa Frederici in St. Louis and continued to work for the Army as a scout and dispatch carrier, operating out of Fort Ellsworth, Kansas. Finally, in 1867, Cody took up the trade that gave him his nickname, hunting buffalo to feed the construction crews of the Kansas Pacific Railroad. By his own count, he killed 4,280 head of buffalo in seventeen months. He is supposed to have won the name "Buffalo Bill" in an eight-hour shooting match with a hunter named William Comstock, presumably to determine which of the two Buffalo Bill�s deserved the title. Beginning in 1868, Cody returned to his work for the Army. He was chief of scouts for the Fifth Cavalry and took part in 16 battles, including the Cheyenne defeat at Summit Springs, Colorado, in 1869. For his service over these years, he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in 1872, although this award was revoked in 1916 on the grounds that Cody was not a regular member of the armed forces at the time. (The award was restored posthumously in 1989). All the while Cody was earning a reputation for skill and bravery in real life, he was also becoming a national folk hero, thanks to the exploits of his alter ego, "Buffalo Bill," in the dime novels of Ned Buntline (pen name of the writer E. Z. C. Judson). Beginning in 1869, Buntline created a Buffalo Bill who ranked with Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone and Kit Carson in the popular imagination, and who was, like them, a mixture of incredible fact and romantic fiction. In 1872 Buntline persuaded Cody to assume this role on stage by starring in his play, The Scouts of the Plains, and though Cody was never a polished actor, he proved a natural showman, winning enthusiastic applause for his good-humored self-portrayal. Despite a falling out with Buntline, Cody remained an actor for eleven seasons, and became an author as well, producing the first edition of his autobiography in 1879 and publishing a number of his own Buffalo Bill dime novels. Eventually, there would be some 1,700 of these frontier tales, the majority written by Prentiss Ingraham. But not even show business success could keep Cody from returning to the West. Between theater seasons, he regularly escorted rich Easterners and European nobility on Western hunting expeditions, and in 1876 he was called back to service as an army scout in the campaign that followed Custer�s defeat at the Little Bighorn. On this occasion, Cody added a new chapter to his legend in a "duel" with the Cheyenne chief Yellow Hair, whom he supposedly first shot with a rifle, then stabbed in the heart and finally scalped "in about five seconds," according to his own account. Others described the encounter as hand-to-hand combat, and misreported the chief�s name as Yellow Hand. Still others said that Cody merely lifted the chief�s scalp after he had died in battle. Whatever actually occurred, Cody characteristically had the event embroidered into a melodrama--Buffalo Bill's First Scalp for Custer--for the fall theater season. Cody�s own theatrical genius revealed itself in 1883, when he organized Buffalo Bill�s Wild West, an outdoor extravaganza that dramatized some of the most picturesque elements of frontier life: a buffalo hunt with real buffalos, an Indian attack on the Deadwood stage with real Indians, a Pony Express ride, and at the climax, a tableau presentation of Custer�s Last Stand in which some Lakota who had actually fought in the battle played a part. Half circus and half history lesson, mixing sentimentality with sensationalism, the show proved an enormous success, touring the country for three decades and playing to enthusiastic crowds across Europe. In later years Buffalo Bill�s Wild West would star the sharpshooter Annie Oakley, the first "King of the Cowboys," Buck Taylor, and for one season, "the slayer of General Custer," Chief Sitting Bull. Cody even added an international flavor by assembling a "Congress of Rough Riders of the World" that included cossacks, lancers and other Old World cavalrymen along with the vaqueros, cowboys and Indians of the American West. Though he was by this time almost wholly absorbed in his celebrity existence as Buffalo Bill, Cody still had a real-life reputation in the West, and in 1890 he was called back by the army once more during the Indian uprisings associated with the Ghost Dance. He came with some Indians from his troupe who proved effective peacemakers, and even traveled to Wounded Knee after the massacre to help restore order. Cody made a fortune from his show business success and lost it to mismanagement and a weakness for dubious investment schemes. In the end, even the Wild West show itself was lost to creditors. Cody died on January 10, 1917, and is buried in a tomb blasted from solid rock at the summit of Lookout Mountain near Denver, Colorado. http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/a_c/buffalobill.htm

20. Structure of Buffalo Bill�s Wild West Elaborate recreations of frontier and battle experiences Enormous battles restaged Former chiefs Sitting Bull and Geronimo engaged to play parts in the repeated devastation of their tribes

21. Broader Cultural Significance Buffalo Bill�s Wild West had educational function: Featured historical scenes that showed the inevitable and ultimately desirable ascendancy of white Western expansion By 1900, �The Wild West� re-enacted American scenes of triumph in Cuba and the Philippines More so than dime novels, the Wild West Show mythologized and internationalized the white western hero Using Native Americans in the role of vanquished FilippinosUsing Native Americans in the role of vanquished Filippinos

22. Wild West Posters and the Iconography of the Western Hero

25. Re-enactment of Custer�s Charge Americans had long memorialized white victimization, virtually ignoring accompanying white atrocities against Indians. Buffallo Bill's Wild West, for example, regularly featured Indian attacks on helpless white settlers but never presented tableaux of white Americans massacring or dispossessing Indians. That was not part of the popular story. The Custer Battlefield became a national monument, the site of the Marias massacre, where U.S. soldiers killed 173 Blackfeet Indians, mostly women and children, in 1870, never even warranted a marker. Western mythologies effectively inverted the story of American conquest. As Richard White [another historian] argues, spectacles like Buffalo Bill's presented the American conquest of the West as a site where whites were victims and Indians aggressors. Source: Christensen, Bonnie. Red Lodge and the Mythic West. University Press of Kansas, 2002. 21, 22 Americans had long memorialized white victimization, virtually ignoring accompanying white atrocities against Indians. Buffallo Bill's Wild West, for example, regularly featured Indian attacks on helpless white settlers but never presented tableaux of white Americans massacring or dispossessing Indians. That was not part of the popular story. The Custer Battlefield became a national monument, the site of the Marias massacre, where U.S. soldiers killed 173 Blackfeet Indians, mostly women and children, in 1870, never even warranted a marker. Western mythologies effectively inverted the story of American conquest. As Richard White [another historian] argues, spectacles like Buffalo Bill's presented the American conquest of the West as a site where whites were victims and Indians aggressors. Source: Christensen, Bonnie. Red Lodge and the Mythic West. University Press of Kansas, 2002. 21, 22

27. Program for Buffalo Bill�s Wild West A FEW REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD VISIT ''BUFFALO BILL'S WILD WEST.'' 1st Over one million people have set you the example. 2nd Because it is a living picture of life on the Frontier. 3rd It is an opportunity afforded your family but once in a lifetime. 4th You will see Indians, Cowboys, and Mexicans, as they live. 5th You will see Buffalo, Elk, wild horses, and a multitude of curiosities. 6th You will see an Indian village, transplanted from the plains 7th You will see the most Wonderful Riders the world can produce. 8th You will see the greatest marksmen in America. 9th You will see Indian warfare depicted in true colors. 10th You will see the attack on the Deadwood stage coach. 11th You will see the method of capturing Wild Horses AND Cattle. 12TH You will see a Buffalo Hunt in all its realistic details. 13th You will see your neighbors there in full force. 14th You will see Buffalo Bill (Hon. W.F. Cody). 15th You will see an Exhibition that has been witnessed and endorsed by. . . tens of thousands of well-informed people in Every Walk of Life.A FEW REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD VISIT ''BUFFALO BILL'S WILD WEST.'' 1st Over one million people have set you the example. 2nd Because it is a living picture of life on the Frontier. 3rd It is an opportunity afforded your family but once in a lifetime. 4th You will see Indians, Cowboys, and Mexicans, as they live. 5th You will see Buffalo, Elk, wild horses, and a multitude of curiosities. 6th You will see an Indian village, transplanted from the plains 7th You will see the most Wonderful Riders the world can produce. 8th You will see the greatest marksmen in America. 9th You will see Indian warfare depicted in true colors. 10th You will see the attack on the Deadwood stage coach. 11th You will see the method of capturing Wild Horses AND Cattle. 12TH You will see a Buffalo Hunt in all its realistic details. 13th You will see your neighbors there in full force. 14th You will see Buffalo Bill (Hon. W.F. Cody). 15th You will see an Exhibition that has been witnessed and endorsed by. . . tens of thousands of well-informed people in Every Walk of Life.

31. Frederic Remington Another creator of Western myth in late 1800s and early 1900s Focused on the cowboy Best known as painter and sculptor, but also wrote early Westerns and illustrated for magazines Over the course of his career, Frederic Remington produced more than three thousand drawings and paintings, twenty-two bronze sculptures, a novel, a Broadway play, and over one hundred articles and stories. Over the course of his career, Frederic Remington produced more than three thousand drawings and paintings, twenty-two bronze sculptures, a novel, a Broadway play, and over one hundred articles and stories.

32. Remington�s Biography Born in upstate New York and attended Yale First went West in 1881, trying to restore lost vigor Worked on Kansas sheep farm, but work too arduous Settled in New York and periodically went West to do illustrations and paintings Completed Western artworks in studio in New Rochelle, NY, based on sketches

41. Questions How does Remington�s West compare with that of Ingraham�s dime novel or Buffalo Bill�s Wild West Show?

42. Remington as an Easterner Captured the romance of the West as an alternative to the settled civilization of the East Portrayed the cowboy as a natural aristocrat The West as a place where independence, individualism, and stoic heroism thrived Significance of Native American figures in Remington�s work , living in a natural world in which all the normal supporting structures of "civilization" were missing , living in a natural world in which all the normal supporting structures of "civilization" were missing Natural aristocrat � none of the supporting structures of civilization exist, living in a natural world in which all the normal supporting structures of "civilization" were missing , living in a natural world in which all the normal supporting structures of "civilization" were missing Natural aristocrat � none of the supporting structures of civilization exist

43. Concluding Passage: Between 1890 and 1920 . . . some historians of the West lost themselves in nostalgia as they invented a lost golden age, an earlier period in Western history which was the very antithesis of the rapidly changing West of their own day. Novelists, artists, and the purveyors of popular culture did much to reinforce their impact. This West of their imaginations was an uncomplicated, sparsely populated area characterized by a majestic, uncluttered landscape rather than by a crowded urban environment. This West was peopled by noble and distinctive individuals, personified by mountain men, trappers, or cowboys, and hardy pioneer farmers. They were a stark contrast to the millions of faceless immigrants from eastern and southern Europe who were just then pouring into the nation�s urban centers. And the dominant Anglo setters of this mythical region displayed great nobility of character and the finest values of the nineteenth-century Protestant Ethic, individualism, self-reliance, courage, and a love for freedom. Gerald Nash, Creating the West: Historical Interpretations 1890-1990. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1991. 207-208. �