Frontier Legends | Buffalo Bill Cody | 6

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0:14From Audible Originals, I'm Lindsey Graham, and this is American History Tellers. Our history, your story.

0:36When 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 frontiersman 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.

1:17Dr. 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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2:37Dr. Paul Hutton, welcome to American History Tellers. Thanks for having me, Lindsay. So let's start a little earlier than Buffalo Bills 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? 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.

3:28They 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 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.

4:13You 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? 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.

4:51He wrote his friends saying, well, this proclamation won't last and eventually we'll get this land and you've got to stake out the best land possible. And then, of course, he also used land bounties that have been given to soldiers 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. Of course, after the American Revolution, the British ban on westward expansion is not an object anymore.

5:31And westward expansion began in earnest with white Americans exploring and settling, quote unquote, empty land. What are some of the routes they took westward and how did they even know about them? Well, sort of the most famous in 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 white-tailed deer. Deerskins went out of southern ports to London, and he scouted out the land of Kentucky.

6:09he 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, 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 was in the bluegrass country of Kentucky, became the outpost of liberty, the furthest outpost of liberty during the American Revolution.

6:48And the British, of course, unleashed their forces, and they also unleashed Indian forces against the pioneers. These hardy frontiers people 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? 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.

7:27Thomas 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 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.

8:12And there's 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 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 America. The book is very positive. It has seven protagonists, three of them Native Americans. Everyone's heroic.

8:49But 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. You use 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?

9:31Well, 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, the beautiful Indian princess who's going to be featured all throughout Western literature, film in 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 the first great American bestseller in the 1820s.

10:19And 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, of 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. Now, I imagine a young Bill Cody would have grown up on these stories of the frontiersman, but the world he was born into saw the frontier melting away.

11:02The 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. Well, Cody was 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.

11:48He works for a firm called Russell Majors and Waddell and they are providing the supply 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.

12:28But 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. 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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14:18Buffalo 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? Young Bill Cody, who 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 and a man who was 10 years older than him, James Butler Hickok.

14:53and 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. 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.

15:31And 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 troop. So a dashing figure. Well, he comes West. 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.

16:10And while others are reminiscing about the Civil War, he writes a book called My Life on the Plain, celebrating his role in the Indian Wars and the conquest of the West. And 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. It's been given to them by those characters in history, but also by James Finnamore Cooper and other writers.

16:46And 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. 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. 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.

17:32Eventually, 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 hide hunters that would come later. By the time the hide 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. He's done with that and he condemns them.

18:05He 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 many guns associated with Cody. So he had a style about him and he was so discovered once he left the railroad work and became an army scout by an Eastern writer named Ned Buntline.

18:49And 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.

19:29Let'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. 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 in 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.

20:14But Cody remained with the 5th Cavalry. It wasn't just for a campaign. 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 a congressional medal 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 is the grandfather of Winston Churchill.

21:05And 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 brim 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 buffaloes. And in fact, when the Grand Duke killed his first buffalo, baskets of champagne were brought by his courtiers.

21:52And 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, Kamees, I can make you a star on the stage. 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? 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 Seventh are wiped out.

22:31He has a typical frontiersman attitude toward Indians. And also, it's a war. You kill them or they will kill you. In fact, he adopts the log hair of the frontiersman. The old mountain men always wear their hair long. And it's so you present a scalp that is worthy of taking. I mean, so it's 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. And then especially when he will establish his Wild West show, he comes to have a completely different attitude.

23:08And 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.

23:44Do you want to stay at Pine Ridge or do 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.

24:17He 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. 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. 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? 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.

24:55You'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, 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 said his knees were knocking.