Buffalo Bill's Wild West: Celebrity, Memory, and Popular History

by Joy S. Kasson

A fascinating analysis of the first famous American to erase the boundary between real history and entertainment

Canada, and Europe. Crowds cheered as cowboys and Indians--and Annie Oakley!--galloped past on spirited horses, sharpshooters exploded glass balls tossed high in the air, and cavalry troops arrived just in time to save a stagecoach from Indian attack. Vivid posters on billboards everywhere made William Cody, the show's originator and star, a world-renowned figure.
Joy S. Kasson's important new book traces Cody's rise from scout to international celebrity, and shows how his image was shaped. Publicity stressed his show's "authenticity" yet audiences thrilled to its melodrama; fact and fiction converged in a performance that instantly became part of the American tradition.

But how, precisely, did that come about? How, for example, did Cody use his audience's memories of the Civil War and the Indian wars? He boasted that his show included participants in the recent conflicts it presented theatrically, yet he also claimed it evoked "memories" of America's bygone greatness. Kasson's shrewd, engaging study--richly illustrated--in exploring the disappearing boundary between entertainment and public events in American culture, shows us just how we came to imagine our memories.

Genres: History, Westerns, Biography, Nonfiction

319 pages, Paperback

First published June 30, 2000

Reviews

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is plenty of history in Ms. Kasson's book, but history itself isn't really the point; the point is to examine and analyze Buffalo Bill's Wild West as a representation--often a conscious, sophisticated one--of the American frontier.

I found many things in this book interesting and surprising. To name just four:

1) For approximately ten years, Buffalo Bill was both a frontier army scout (summers) and a New York actor playing himself in a series of melodramas (winters). After accomplishing his most famous exploit--the killing and scalping of Yellow Hand in retaliation for the Little Big Horn--he almost immediately telegraphed a New York department store and arranged to have Yellow Hand's regalia displayed in one of its windows.

2) The Native-Americans in Buffalo Bill's Wild West viewed their work as a more honorable form of employment than most others because it involved the skills of riding and shooting, and some even viewed the performances themselves as an extension of their battlefield prowess. (In fact, a Lakota warrior once stood in the empty arena at the close of a season, singing a praise-song for his brave deeds during the year.) Also, the Indians themselves had some control over the use of their images, at least outside the show itself; in one instance, Iron Tail and his people refused to have their picture taken with a statue of Christopher Columbus.

3) Using the Wild West as a model, its promoters launched another venture that tried to treat African-Americans with the same pretense to authenticity and historical reverence as the Wild West in a presentation called "Black America," containing everything from songs and jigs to simulated slave auctions and a working tobacco factory. It never caught on.

4) Although Buffalo Bill was a heavy drinker and an imprudent custodian of his own money, he had entrepreneurial and marketing instincts well ahead of his time. The town of Cody, Wyoming was founded partly as an opportunity to market real estate and tourism in an authentic, Buffalo-Bill-endorsed Western location not far from Yellowstone Park, featuring not only the fully equipped modern "Irma Hotel" (named after Cody's daughter) but also the more rustic log-cabin structure, the "Puhaska Teepee," for those with an appetite for a slightly wilder West.

Kasson's book is well-worth your time. Paradoxically, by focusing on the purity of the Wild West representation, the author reveals the historical complexities and contradictions, and brings Cody's era closer to our own.

[Jenna Bertoli · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is to show john that i don't just read fantasy books... 3.5 because it's detailed and kept my interest, but also SO detailed i got lost in the sauce. read this for research paper #1 and was oddly surprised that it kept my interest the entire time. probably the first time i read a scholarly book that wasn't dragging on forever. highly recommend, very interesting topic #ilovethewildwest #ilovecowboys #whydidthewestclose

[MH · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really excellent history of the Wild West show, and how it (and Buffalo Bill's celebrity) worked to create ideas of the remembered frontier. The idea that the American West was a place of memory from nearly the beginning isn't new, but her engagement with that idea and the evocative specifics she uses to explore it are just great, and she adds layers of interesting complications to ideas that I thought I was familiar with. It's deeply researched and Kasson investigates a wide number of meanings - there are a lot of illustrations, all of them smartly examined - and she manages the neat trick of being both scholarly and still very, very enjoyable.

[Carissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

a look at how the image of the west was curated

[Charles Heath · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book!

[Larry · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Arthur Koppitt's play, "Buffalo Bill and the Indians," there is a scene in which Buffalo Bill, in pursuit of Sitting Bull, who has abruptly left his employment, goes to his closet to get his buckskins. Upon opening the closet, and seeing more than a dozen buckskin jackets, some of them heavily decorated, Cody says, "Which one is my real jacket?" That fictitious scene captures a central truth of Cody's career, and Kasson's book fleshes out that truth.

Buffalo Bill fluctuated between being a frontier person (scout, buffalo hunter, entrepreneur) and being an entertainer. For a decade he migrated between the frontier (in temperate months) and the stage (in the winter). At the same time, he was a showman in either world. When he killed a sub-chief named Yellow Hand while serving with Merritt's 5th Cavalry shortly after the destruction of the 7th Cavalry, he did so in front of a cheering group of soldiers. Having killed him, he arranged to have Yellow Hand's weapons and accoutrements shipped off the form an exhibit for his next show. Cody merchandised the event as "the first scalp for Custer," and it became the bedrock for his rather outlandish role as participant and chronicler, witness and promoter. His awareness of his opportunities for fame and gain was more highly developed than his commitment to truth, but that bifurcation marked the larger culture that rewarded him, too.

[Kirk Astroth · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating examination of one of America's original showmen. This book recounts the life and times of Buffalo Bill as his life crossed from rugged American West to a more modern age--yet he continues to tell and retell the story of the disappearing frontier.

Cody has some interesting parallels to Trump and Reagan. Entertainment encourages a confusion between "daydreams" and daily life, and Reagan's presidency did the same. They all blur the lines between fact and fiction, history and melodrama, truth and entertainment. Jules Feiffer remarked that Reagan would have believed in evolution if he had ever played Darwin in a movie.

Cody's legacy is about the cultural values that became basic to our national identity: the use of violence and conquest to form the US, America's love-hate relationship with unspoiled nature and native peoples, gender and the meaning of heroism, and the role of the individual in an increasingly urban, industrialized and corporate society.

[Starbubbles · Rating 4 out of 5]

very very readable, but very long paragraphs made the 200+ pages difficult to wade through. the argument got repetative due to the set up/organization of the book, but it was fairly easy to pick and chose the topic you want to read about next. this book brings to life buffalo bill and his fame, celeberity status, wild west shows, and public memory in a fascinating way.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sean picked this up for me at a used bookstore more than a year ago after he learned that my great-grandfather broke horses for Buffalo Bill (my great-grandfather was quite young at the time, Buffalo Bill was an old man).

[Tasha · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm still not sure what the point of this book was, but the Indian part was pretty interesting.

[Cindy Regan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting account of an original celebrity.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extra-ordinary, very well researched, lucid writing.