Louis S. Warren (103 page)

42. The ethnological congress was pioneered by a German circus owner, Carl Hagenbeck, in 1874. Davis,
Circus Age,
118.

43. BBDC 1883, n.p.

44. BBDC 1883, n.p.

45. This synopsis and quote are from Yost,
Buffalo Bill,
134–36.

46. BBDC 1883, n.p.

47. Russell,
Lives and Legends,
295.

48. Clay McShane and Joel A. Tarr, “The Centrality of the Horse in the Nineteenth-Century American City,” in
The Making of Urban America,
ed. Raymond Mohl, 2nd ed., (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1997), 109.

49. “Pictures of the Plains,”
The World
(New York), July 16, 1886, p. 3. Within months, the tribute was reprinted in the London dramatic publication
The Era
(“The ‘Wild West' Show,”
The Era,
Sept. 18, 1886, p. 10). Less than two years later, John Burke, Cody's ghostwriter, repeated it for an American readership in
Story of the Wild West and Camp-FireChats
(1888; rprt. Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, 1970), 714–15. The description was imitated and plagiarized thereafter, as when Percy MacKaye described Cody as “veritably a Centaur,” in 1927, and when Stella Foote recalled him as “the complete restoration of the Centaur,” in 1954. MacKaye, Epoch, 2:91; Foote, Letters from
“Buffalo Bill,”
15.

50. “Transatlantic Centaurs,” see
The Era,
April 23, 1887, clipping in Johnny Baker Scrapbook, DPL-WHR. For “coming centaur,” see Cody,
Story of the Wild West,
721.

51. Firmage,
E. E. Cummings: Complete Poems,
1904–1962,
90.

52. J. Michael Padgett, quoted in “Human Fate: Part Beast, Part Angel,”
New York Times,
Oct. 31, 2003, p. B42.

53. Page DuBois, Centaurs and Amazons: Women and the Pre-History of the Great Chain of
Being
(Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1982), 25–42.

54. See Bederman,
Manliness and Civilization,
16; Deloria,
Playing Indian,
107–9; Herman,
Hunting and the American Imagination,
237–69. Remington himself played football at Yale in 1880. See Samuels and Samuels,
Frederic Remington,
26–27.

55. Yost,
Buffalo Bill,
135.

56. Handcrafted, individually numbered and named (“The Deadwood,” “The Wyoming”), ornamented with hand-painted scrollwork and original landscape paintings on their doors, these coaches were frontier “originals” in two ways: each was unique, and no other company could afford to mimic their master craftsmanship (which was so painstaking that only three thousand of them were ever manufactured). Spring,
Cheyenne and Black
Hills Stage Routes,
88–89, 334; also “Stagecoach,” in
New Encyclopedia of the American West,
1074–75.

57. “Staging in the Far West,”
Harper's Weekly,
July 4, 1874, p. 556.

58. In 1884, the owners of the Cheyenne and Black Hills Stage Line sold out when the railroad extended from Cheyenne to the Black Hills. In 1887, the new owner of the line, Russell Thorp, “staged” a final journey of the Deadwood stage for paying customers in Cheyenne, with passengers, driver, and vehicle posing for a famous photograph of “the last coach out” just before they departed. “Days of '49” was a popular miners' song in the Black Hills. See Rodman W. Paul, Mining Frontiers of the Far West, 1848–1800 (1973; rprt. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1974), 178–79; for “last coach out,” see Spring,
Cheyenne and Black Hills Stage Routes,
334–35. For trolleys, see Wild West Diary of 1896, M. B. Bailey, reprinted in Fellows and Freeman,
This Way to the Big Show,
352.

59. BBDC 1883 program, n.p.

60. “The Wild West Show,” clipping attached to sketch of Deadwood stage pursuit, in WFC Scrapbook, 1887, Buffalo Bill Museum, Lookout Mountain, CO.

61. Russell,
Lives and Legends,
295; Spring,
Cheyenne and Black Hills Stage and Express Routes,
359.

62. Cody himself described his route out of the Plains in Cody,
Life of Buffalo Bill,
359; he recounted it again in WFC testimony, March 6, 1905, Folder 13, 18–19, in CC.

63. In other ways, too, its real history diverged considerably from show accounts. If this coach was named “The Deadwood,” it was only one of several dozen to ply the route between Deadwood and Cheyenne. The Cheyenne and Black Hills Stage Line, the original proprietor of this coach, owned thirty Abbot and Downing Concords. When he established the line at the beginning of the Black Hills gold rush in 1874, Luke Voorhees ordered new coaches (not veterans dating from 1863). Later, he outfitted two so-called “treasure coaches,” Concord coaches with steel plates bolted to the inside of their compartments, and small portholes for windows—through which guards fired their weapons. During the Cold Spring holdup, a steel-plated coach named “The Monitor” was attacked by a gang of bandits who killed one guard and wounded others before finally seizing the coach. The famed “Deadwood” of Buffalo Bill's arena had no steel plates, no portholes—and no connection to the Cold Spring holdup. Spring,
Cheyenne and Black
Hills Stage and Express Routes,
248–49, 265–75.

64. Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower,
Old Diaries,
1881–1901
(London: John Murray, 1902), 107–8.

65. Fellows and Freeman,
This Way to the Big Show,
180.

66. Fellows and Freeman,
This Way to the Big Show,
180.

67. Although he toyed with the idea of commissioning gamblers to play the crowd, he turned away from it. In future years, whenever small-money shell games and faro dealers became too numerous on the fringes, Cody would send out show cowboys to break their equipment—and their noses, too. Fellows and Freeman,
This Way to the Big Show,
117–18.

68. “Over the arena proper where the exhibition is given there is nothing but the blue vault of the sky,” claimed
Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World
1898
Show Courier
(New York: J. A. Rudolph, 1898), 32.

69. Lears,
No Place of Grace,
23.

70. Nate Salsbury, “A Card from Nate Salsbury,”
The Frontier Express—Buffalo Bill Wild West
Courier
12, no. 95 (1895), BBHC.

71. Buffalo Bill's Wild West, “in no wise partaking of the nature of a ‘circus,' will be at once new, startling, and instructive,” claimed Wild West show programs, and publicists never tired of contrasting the Wild West with the “old played out circus-menagerie combination.” John Burke, “Salutatory” in BBWW 1885 program (Hartford, CT: Calhoun Printing, 1885), n.p.; “played out circus-menagerie” in “The Wild West,”
Montreal Herald,
Aug. 12, 1885, in NSS, vol. 1, 1885–86, DPL.

72. Rennert,
100
Posters of Buffalo Bill's Wild West,
5.

73. Steele Mackaye, quoted in Walter Havighurst,
Annie Oakley of the Wild West
(1954, rprt. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 86.

74. “The Wild West,”
Free Press and Times,
Aug. 6, 1885; in NSS, vol. 1, 1885–86, DPL.

75. Route from Russell,
Lives and Legends,
295–99; quote from WFC to Julia Cody Goodman, Aug. 16, 1883, in Foote,
Letters from “Buffalo Bill,”
20.

76. Fellows and Freeman,
This Way to the Big Show,
68–69;

77. Russell,
Lives and Legends,
297.

78. Courtney Riley Cooper, quoted in Fellows and Freeman,
This Way to the Big Show,
69.

79. Cody to Sam Hall, Sept. 2, 1879, MS 6 Series I:B Css Box 1/6, BBHC.

80. “Finding a Fortune,” transcript of article from
Denver Tribune,
March 28, 1882, in MSS 126, Box 1, CHS; also WFC to Al Goodman, Feb. 12, 1882, MS 6 Series I:B Css Box 1/7, BBHC. The pattern of legal fights with extended relatives was something of a family tradition. After Isaac Cody died, his brothers, Joseph and Elijah, battled each other in a suit over unpaid debts, tying up Isaac Cody's estate in probate court. See Leavenworth County Probate Court, Case File:
Joseph Cody v. Elijah Cody,
June 8, 1857, KSHS, Topeka, KS.

81. WFC testimony, Denver, March 23, 1904, p. 11; CC Folder 13; also Russell,
Lives and
Legends,
257–58.

82. WFC testimony, March 23, 1904, Folder 2, p. 13.

83. Yost,
Buffalo Bill,
154–55; Foote,
Letters from “Buffalo Bill,”
22.

84. WFC to Julia Cody Goodman, Sept. 24, 1883, in Foote,
Letters from “Buffalo Bill,”
21. For birth of Irma, see Yost,
Buffalo Bill,
126.

85. Yost,
Buffalo Bill,
142.

86. McCoy,
Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade,
202, 204; Terry Jordan,
North American Cattle
Ranching Frontiers: Origins, Diffusion, Differentiation
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1997), 210–11, 232–34.

87. Robert Zeigler, “The Cowboy Strike of 1883: Its Causes and Meaning,”
West Texas HistoricalAssociation Year Book
47 (1971): 33; Don D. Walker,
Clio's Cowboys: Studies in the
Historiography of the Cattle Trade
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1981), 141; Hine and Faragher,
American West,
322.

88. BBWW 1885 program, n.p.; 1893 program, 25–26. Omohundro's article originally appeared as “The Cow-Boy,” Spirit of the Times, March 24, 1877. See Herschel C. Logan,
Buckskin and Satin
(Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Co., 1954), 26–30.

89. Robert Utley,
Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989); Casey Tefertiller,
Wyatt Earp: The Life Behind the Legend
(New York: John Wiley, 1997).

90. WFC to “Dear Sister and Brother,” Sept. 24, 1883, in Foote,
Letters from “Buffalo Bill,”
21.

91. “The Wild West,”
Chicago Tribune,
Oct. 18, 1883, p. 3. On dime novels and crime, see “Sunday Tribune,”
Chicago Tribune,
Oct. 20, 1883, p. 4. “The life of ‘Red Bill,' alias ‘Razor Joe,' a thief who has just died in a Philadelphia prison, is printed in another column. It is recommended to the young as less likely to inspire a criminal inclination than the current histories of Jesse James and ‘Cowboy Charley.' ” See also Denning,
Mechanic
Accents.

92. “The Wild West,”
Chicago Tribune,
Oct. 18, 1883, p. 3.

93. “The Dime Novel,”
Chicago Tribune,
Oct. 18, 1883, p. 8.

94. Salsbury, “The Origin of the Wild West Show,” in YCAL MSS 17, NSP Box 2/63.

95. Cecil Smith, “The Road to Musical Comedy,”
Theatre Arts,
Nov. 1947, pp. 57–58.

96. “Salsbury's Troubadors at the Grand Opera House,”
Chicago Tribune,
Oct. 16, 1883, p. 5.

97. BBDC 1883 program, M Cody Box 6, DPL.

98. Nate Salsbury, “Long Hair and a Plug Hat,” typescript in YCAL MSS 17, NSP.

99. See, for example, Cody's own celebration of the fact that his show cast was “everywhere acclaimed gentlemen,” and “free of impure associations,” in “The Wild West,”
Montreal
Herald and Commercial Gazette,
Aug. 17, 1885, n.p., clipping in Series VI:G, Box 1, Folder 15, BBHC.

100. WFC to Nate Salsbury, n.d., YCAL MSS 17, NSP, Box 1, Folder 4.

101. Sarah J. Blackstone,
Buckskin, Bullets, and Business: A History of Buffalo Bill's Wild West
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986), 54.

102. For descriptions of the scene, see “Royalty at the ‘Wild West,' ”
The Era,
May 7, 1887, p. 15; “Buffalo Bill,”
The Globe
(Toronto), Aug. 19, 1885, clipping in Series VI:G, Box 1, Folder 15, BBHC. In those few cases when it was not the show finale, it was almost always included earlier in the program. Alternative finales included a cyclone during parts of the 1886 and 1887 seasons, the battle of Tsien-Tsin in 1901, and an avalanche in 1907. BBWW 1886 (Madison Square Garden Program), Inaugural Invitation Exhibition of Buffalo Bill's Wild West” (Manchester, UK: Guardian Printing Works, 1887), n.p., M Cody Box 6, DPL-WHR; BBWW 1907, various programs, MS 6:VIA, BBHC.

103. Richard White has noted that by the 1890s the log cabin served as an icon of progressive history, the humble origins of a great nation. White, “Frederick Jackson Turner and Buffalo Bill,” 19–26.

104. David Nasaw,
Going Out,
15: “The home—not the club, the saloon, the firehouse, or the theater—was the heart and soul of middle-class existence.” Mary Ryan,
Cradle of the MiddleClass,
155–85; Richard Sennett,
Families Against the City: Middle-Class Homes of IndustrialChicago,
1872–1890
(New York, 1974), 52–53, 224.

105. Nate Salsbury, “A Dilemma,” typescript, n.d., YCAL MSS 17, NSP, Box 2163; Fellows and Freeman,
This Way to the Big Show,
70–71.

106. WFC to N. Salsbury, Feb. 14, 1885, YCAL MSS 17, NSP, Box 1/4.

107. WFC to N. Salsbury, March 9, 1885, YCAL MSS 17, NSP, Box 1/4.

108. Russell,
Lives and Legends,
311–13.

109. Discussion of the merits of shooting skill, as opposed to stage tricks, was widespread. See “The Referee,” n.d., n.p., clipping in Annie Oakley Scrapbook, 1887, BBHC.

110. Russell,
Lives and Legends,
315.

111. Allen,
Horrible Prettiness.

112. Nasaw,
Going Out,
26.

113. Glenda Riley,
The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994), 22–26.