Transcripts For CSPAN3 Buffalo Bills Wild West Child Performers 20171011

On april 17, 1886, the omaha daily beast spoke of william codys visit to the town the day before. And his enthusiasm for his upcoming show. Which was to debut in st. Louis on may 9. After bragging about the number of sue actors he engage. Buffalo bill told of another coo. Theres one new artist i engaged who is a prodigy. A young girl only 15 years of age. Her powers with the rifle rk shotgun or revolver are marvelous. I dont bar anybody. Her name is Lillian Smith. He she comes from california. She will travel with her father and mother. Smith would later different herself from anny oakly and other performers by transforming herself into a native american princess. That transformation in 1901 presents a jux to position between youth and ethnicity. Through 1888 it was the Sharp Shooters youth and gender that presented both opportunities and lim limitations trt tune. Her acceptance presented some extraordinary challenges to a young girl. None of which had much to do with her shooting prowess. Lets see. Lee vi and reck ka smith. Accompanied their daughter from the wilds of the Central Coast of california to north plat. To st. Louis and to staten island. That summer of 1886. When i staten island. It was had made a business deal with buffalo bill. And they needed some entertainment and buffalo bill stepped up to the plate. So they got to new york that summerover 1886 where lillian wowed thousands of spectators daily. Alternating between a rifle and a to hit the bulls eye time and again. On horse book and foot. She broke 25 glass balls in a minute. Struck a plate 30 times in 15 seconds. Shot two balls rapidly on a string around a pole. And many, many, many other trick shots. Lillian Frances Smith was born in 1871 in california. Which is very near lake ta hoe. She was born to quakers who hailed from massachusetts and had moved to california with their young son about four years earlier. Her father later recounted that while host kid in the county were quote little william tells. He was still surprised one day to see his daughter lillian at age six could shoot and kill a spar row with a simple bow and arrow he made for her. In the late 1870s, he moved the family to the more temperate town. He built ships for river commerce. But also use td his extraordinary shooting ability to make extra money. From which from the miller and lux ranch. Lillian received a 22 rifle for her ninth birthday. Often accompanied her father on the shooting excursions. In no time she was roaming the river valley alone. Packing home rabbits and foul for the family to eat. Much like anny oakly did for her family as well. Smith caught the attention of locals in the suler of 1881. Santa cruz county has a shooting prodigy in the person of lillian f smith. A ten yearold girl who lives near coral. Reported the sacramento daily record union. Being an Incorporated Area of santa cruz county. This was in june of 1881. When she was not quite eleven years old. San francisco Amusement Park owner robert wood ward i dont think its going. Robert was so impressed ta he signed smith to her first formal exhibition on july 24. She showed no embarrassment the daily record union reported. And proceeded to shatter glass balls in a business like way. Worthy of dock carver. Reloading her rifle like a veteran. Okay its not doesnt seem to be. Thank you, sam. For the next two years. His daughter could beat anyone and offered purses of 500 to 5,000. I have not received any reply from anyone yet. He lamented in late 1884. I wince more will say i had match my daughter against dak carver. Captain ee stubs, and etc. Listing any number of famous Sharp Shooters. And described a number of options that people could do to challenge his daughter. Including hitting english pins to breaking glass balls with either richl or shotgun. The mastery of the ladder being something relatively new to lillian. In april 1885, came the young Sharp Shooters impressive exhibition in San Francisco. During which she used a winchester to break dock carvers speed record for shooting 100 glass balls. Bill cody most likely discovered Lillian Smith in or near San Francisco. The following spring. When he debuted his play the prairie waif. Her father could easily have reached out to cody and probably did. Or perhaps cody saw her shoot in one of the many galleries in hamlets outside the city. Whatever the case, meeting william cody could not have come at a better time for lillian. She had fairly established herself as the champion rifle shot of california. And probably felt a yearning for new challenges and a desire for some independence from her parents. I like to think of lillian as having feeling similar to those of a young olympic athletes today. Tense combination of wanting to stretch ones physical feats. But wishing one could simply hang out with other teenagers. Like johnny baker and anny oakly once lillian joined Buffalo Bills wild west she was a solo act. Shooting doing trick shots. Later on when the wild west moved up to Madison Square garden, and did its drama of civilization. They give gave lilian a bigger part. She would do more acting and incorporate it more scenery with her shooting work. Lil wrans persona in the buffalo bill wild west was not all that much different from her real childhood. Her brother charles also an exceptional gunman, was ten years older than her and while the siblings often went on family hunting adventures, charles eventually broke off with his family to start his own family. And much like an any oakley, lilian had become a source of income for her family from the age of nine on. We do not know how much lilian was in school, but we can assume that she was only there when absolutely required. Certainly she did not have playmates on her shooting exhibition tours up and down the state of california in her preteen and early teen years. Lilians publicity piece in the buffalo bill wild Wests Program in 1886 fairly accurately and by the way, you can see that program in the mccrack enresearch library. It fairly accurately reflected her real childhood, unique that it was. It went in part like this. At age seven lilian expressed herself as dissatisfied with dolls and wanted a little rifle. When nine years old her father bought her a ballard rifle. 22caliber. It weighed 7 pounds, which she still uses, with which after a little practice and instruction she got on her little pony and bagged two cotton tails, three jack rabbits and two kwals. She spent her leisure time with horse, dog and gun. On the ranges hunting and generally bringing home a meant i feel supply of game. She accompanied her father to a lagoon near the san with a keen river when ducks were meant i feel. And it says a little note about when ducks were plentiful. Miller and lux transform the Central Valley of california into the agricultural mechanic ka that it is today and in order to do that they needed to cut waterways all throughout the Central Valley. Probably about, i dont know, 900 square miles. So lilian and her father with skiff along these new inlets, and they would shoot the ducks and the geese when they came down to eat the farmers alfal fa seeds. He was greatly aton i should by her killing 40 red heads and malladders mostly on the wing. After another occasion in which the family was camping in nearby santa cruz, lilian surprised her mother and other true story, by the way. I have find newspaper reports to back this up. In which the family was camping in nearby santa crews lilian surprised her mother and other campers by depositing at her feet the car can you say of a wild cat, dead from a shot square in the heart. Her fame spread throughout the golden state and her father was induced to present her to the public of San Francisco where in july of 1881 she gave seven successful receptions at woodwards Amusement Park. Which was like did i see any land today. This won her a host of admirers and compliments from those who before seeing her had been inkred house. The program goes on to discuss the many prices smith won before being discovered by william cody, almost all of the incidents mentioned her in publicity pieces can be directly attributed to contemporary sources such as Central Valley newspaper accounts of her exploits, gun club reports, vital records and oral histories. As Martin Woodruff here found in his wonderful study of youth in codys wild west the shows performers all performed with gunls, uniting child, rifle and nature in the story of american frontier con quest, a construction that grew out of longstanding links between the romantic child and the natural world. For lilian smith this was a natural continuation of her real life. In the early 1880s the United States frontier was just a few years away from being closed forever, but californias san with a keen river valley area was still some of the roughest toughest terrain a man or awe girl could conquer. According to smith her parents camped near the wild west show grounds at all times, were averse to her mingling with the opposite sex, believing her too young. Smith disagreed. I never had any Children Playmates she told one reporters, so i suppose i consider myself prematurely old. Old enough to embark on a steady flirtation with cowboy skblams kid will oh bewho was 14 years her senior. In september before the troops set up at Madison Square garden lilian married jim kid in his tent while others distracted her parents. There is no doubt that lilian was truly submit enwith jim kid. He was kind and honorable, funny and good looking. But this marriage served another purpose for smith as well. Willow besuffered as a buffer between smith and her parents more specifically her father levi. There was much discussion in the press that autumn of 86 discussion about whether the marriage was valid about whether her father would succeed in breaking the pair up. In any case in april of 1887 smith and will oh beconsidered themselves a married couple and when they left the docks of new york city and headed toward england everyone knew them as husband and wife. Notably lilians parents did not accompany their daughter on this leg of the show. After all, a married woman did not need a chaperone. She had her husband. So while marrying jim kid was a way for the young lilian to escape the cluchls of her stage parent father, she soon found herself mired in a social in social and professional scenarios she never could have anticipated being so young. As glenda riley notes in her oakley biography, cody had obviously failed to think through the lilian smith to the rest of the company, especially to her direct competitor. Perhaps, though, its just as likely the colonel simply thought of both women as accomplished performers that he needed to add to the wild west. In any case, any possible camaraderie between an any oakley and lilian smith soured within days of the two meeting each other in 1886. Oakley lopped six years off her birth date for the press making her 20 years old again instead of 26. Smith ran around bragging that an any oakley would be done for once the audience saw her own self shoot. Lilian told american reporters that she spent the most time with queen victoria, showing the queen the mechanics of her firearm and receiving warm accolades from the monarch. Indeed a sketch from the London Illustrated times seemed to bear this out and the oakley camp fired back, talking about how well oakley did at with him bell done while smith did so poorly. And that is true. Husbands frank butler and kid willow by stepped into the pray acting as protective proektsz for the two women and trading bashs in the two newspapers and sporting magazines like american field on behalf of their wives. They left codys show in 1887 only to return in 1889 whether the show no longer included smith, which was probably a condition of oakleys return. Although smiths sharp shooting rivalled oakleys the latters dpla of petite dough mess advertisety out shown smith, who was heavy and single. In fact, lilian had just been promoted to a bigger act before the show returned to new york in 1888. Consisting of trk shooting off the backs of horses alongside cody and johnny baker in the ring. The butlers ability to negotiate and to promote an any as a celebrity with victorian moors clearly over road smiths raw talent. Her feelings about being pushed out of the wild west are not recorded, but one can only imagine the disappointment she must be felt. A teenage disappointment made he is poe neshlel worse by the fact that she was working on a very grown up stage. It should come at no surprise, then, that later on smith borrowed a page from an any oakleys book. In the summer of 1901 when she was nearly 30 years old after a successful vaudville career but one in which she felt stifled being indoors so much, lilian was hired by frederick t. Cummins to appear in his Indian Congress at the worls fair in 1901 in buffalo. Cumminss ethnoological exhibition featured lilian the california hundred treasury as win oh that, long lost sue or fan. She added princess to her name when she and common law husband french halfly later joined upony bills wild west. The california girl was now an indian girl. According to various press accounts win oh that was either the daughter of a white mother and a sue chief or a sue mother and a white pioneer or she was full blooded sue raised by a white family. Take your pick. She wore beaded buck skin tunics or jumpers or dresses and routinely styled her hair in braids. Sometimes crowned in etf erred head pieces. And in all of the 1901 exhibition publicity pieces for lilian smith as win oh that, 11 years were lopped off her true age, making her 18 years old again and still a child of nature. Thank you. [applause] thank you. Now to give us something of an any oakleys take on all of this we have monica rico, who is an associate professor of history at Lawrence University in am ton, wisconsin, where shes taught since 2001. Her Research Interests include environmental history, gender history and the american west, and her book which no doubt many of us have heard of is natures noticeable man, transatlantic mass could you lynn its which came out in 2013. Shes currently working on a book eleventh project. And shes going to talk today about annee oakley performing the new girl. Its loading like crazy. There we go. Okay. So first of all, some of you probably know rex meyers and susan richards, and i have to thank them although theyre not here because they spruced me to jeremy about ten years ago, and jeremy introduced me to Frank Kristen son, so big thanks to frank and jeremy for having me here. Its really a pleasure. Im not going to talk that much, to be honest, about an any oakleys take on things. Im going to actually try to talk a little bit more about how the people who surrounded her may have understood or read her performance within the cultural context of their time. And in so doing i want to try to provide some context for some additional context for this sort of apparent fascination with girlishness that seemed to have been part of female performance in the wild west arena. So in some ways with oakley there is kind of this proliferation of images of her. We do have some writings from her. She gave quite a few newspaper interviews. But the actual image of her in some ways has kind of floated free from the historical oakley to represent a wide variety of things. So in childrens books shes often upheld as a kind of model of a talented girl who pursued her dreams. In the film with barbara stan wick shes really a romantic her oh win. This is a poster from the early 90s revival of an any get your gun. You have two theet rick cal takes. In the 1950s there was a Television Serial featuring ran an any oakley individual who was a shearith of a town who solved crimes. Wasnt married but had an invalid kid brother whom she took care of. And this is in addition to various other dime novels, programs, pictures and so on. There is the actual historical an any oakley. And that image as well is a pretty popular kind of image when ef fem ra from the wild west is given out to people. So we see some of the kind of key trademarks of her look, which she refined fairly early in her career, and then kind of kept pretty static throughout that career. So what id like to do in the next slide is talk a little bit about what that image was. So oakley faced several kind of challenges as a female performer in the wild west. One of those challenges was ensuring that she didnt look too masculine, too an droj news. It was important for her to be a feminine, a vision of femininety in the arena and to not be seen as overly challenging or subverting or undermining gender norms. But at the same time it was also important for her to be a respectable woman, to be seen as not an actress or an acrobat or a dancer, all kind of roles of entertainment that was associated with sexual i am morality. Just as cody often emphasized that the wild west was really an educational experience and not a show, oakley stressed that her performance was really a demonstration of skill rather than a piece of show biz. Now, obviously thats a claim. Underneath it there was plenty of entertainment and lots of careful construction of a neatly paced act that had a climax. But one of the things that she emphasized was that she really performed her tricks. There wasnt any subterfuge or slight of hand. A lot of theater Sharp Shooters, not other arena Sharp Shooters, but theater Sharp Shooters were known to use various kinds of tricks and rusz to perform their stunts. In the space of the wild west arena you couldnt really do that. You actually had to kind of walk your talk. You had to show that you really could perform these stunts. And so one of the things that oakley did was take the arena setting and use it to her advantage to really stress this idea that she was a respectable woman or respectable female performing a demonstration and in that way to balance this quality of femininety while still not being perceived as overly putting herself on display in a public space. So the image on the left is a publicity illustration, obviously, and one of the things thats noticeable about it as compared to the photograph on the right is the way in which oakley is appeared in stays that are quite tightly laced and emphasize the mausht of her figure. This is a somewhat more sexual iced image of oakley, but if you compare it to and i took the slide out because i didnt really have time. If you compare it to images of dancer and ak row bats from the same time period, you can see that this is actually much less sexual iced. The image on the right is even more is even more in some ways an droj news. Oakley didnt want to wear stays in the arena because they would interfere with her shooting and the ability for her to do her tricks. Similarly, thats one reason why she didnt wear really long skirts. But it was important that her legs not be bare or seem bare, that they were covered, and so she wore these kind of leggings and gators over her shoes. And then she added some key touches, the long hair flowing down her back, which became a trademark. The stetson. Its important for women to wear stet sons as well. And the publicity picture, various meld z that she had won. Although she didnt wear those in the ring. And then of course various guns. So whats shee doing here . Is this a sort of proet oh feminist picture or is this in some ways a vision of petite dough mess advertise sti . Well, off stage in the kind of backstage area of the wild west, i think its probably fair to say that oakley really did perform a kind of dough mess advertise sti. In her tent she would serve tea to reporters, offer them cookies, do fine needle work. Journalists commented on her, quote, decided pretty and win some face, sweet and gentle manners, her quiet and lady like ways and her soft girlish voice. And in the ayeena and remember like there was no dialogue. It was pretty much all sort of body language when youre watching this little figure out there in the center of the arena. In the arena, some of the things that oakley did were, again, quite feminine. She was known for sort of skipping around, for to saying kisses at the audience, for sort of stamping her foot and to saying her head when she would miss a shot. And so she really performed this comic but playful but also quite in some ways girlish and youthful image in the arena. One that wasnt sexual iced or seductive or in other terms one that wasnt overly managed. And in this way she mirrored her act, mirrored a cultural figure that was just coming into visibility in the 1880s and 1890s, a new idea for girls. The adolescent girl in some ways kind of comes into sharper focus in the 1880s partly as a result of physicians and educators concerns about Child Development that drew from ideas about evolution and ideas about how organize nifrms develop. Theres a lot of fascination with kind of the ways in which the Development Trajectory of individuals from infancy to adulthood kind of mirrored the developmental trajectory of the human race as a whole. So just as little tiny children were considered to be savage, so too there were actual savannah ages, quote unquote savannah ages who were supposedly acting like small children who didnt have self restraint, who were overly emotional. So adolescents for educators and physicians in this period was more and more seen as this critical stage for the development of character and morality that would be not necessarily as christian eyesed or as religious as earlier notions of character formation had been, but more dedicated towards creating individuals who could function in modern industrial culture and sustain certain dominant ideals of gender and family and nation hood. So what im going to do next is look a little bit at this image of girl hood, both in the United Kingdom and in the United States. And well see how this image of the new girl kind of surrounded oakleys act and conferred upon it a richer meaning than it would have had without that context. Okay. So here is some girls fencing around 1905. Roading school was a boarding school for middle class girls in england. Its in southern england. Fencing was encouraged for teenage girls. At this point it was sort of more like dance than an actual system of selfdefense because guns kind of tended to make fencing obsolete as a sort of combat system. So there was nothing sort of worrisome about girls learning to fence of it was meant to teach coordination and grace and quickness on ones feet. So fencing, croquet, tennis, rogue, swimming, skating, all of these outdoors activities were encouraged for the new girl. Teachers and educators told parents that they shouldnt keep their girls koopd up at home endlessel doing needle work and housework, that they should encourage them to get outside to, quote, enjoy the free use of their limbs. Like that limbs are being used. That girls should actually learn, quote, Self Reliance, and even an element of competition, provided that competition was not channeled into overly aggressive forms of athletics. So, for example, field hockey was okay, but rugby was kind of a little bit too physical. You didnt wanted girls actually like colliding and tackling with each other, but it was okay to have them competing. And so this was very much in contrast to an earlier notion of girl hood where girls were sort of expected to learn how to control themselves to interior spaces and to restrain physically restrain themselves, close their bodies down and occupy less, less space. Now, that said, the neo athletic girl wasnt necessarily meant to go out and compete in public. Athletics were meant to be pursued among friends, at school, in family outings. Sports were envisioned as a way for girls to be comrade well boys their own age and to pursue a kind of friendship that would eventually it was thought down along the line turn into hert oh sexual romance or marriage. But it was kind of important in the darwinian thinking at the time that middle class white girls not mature sexually overly efrl. That was perceived to be something that was add avisic that would be a throw back that would not be part of civilization. So instead girls in this new ideal were expected to kind of blend home in public spaces and places like tennis courts, the school, hockey field and eventually to be able to enjoy things like shooting or tennis or golf with their husbands. And so the longterm view was that athletics would be a way for women to be healthier mothers and to produce vigorous children for the future of white people, basically, in the world for the future of the empire. And also as a way of strengthening companion at marriage and family. So here is just another image of the kind of ways in which sports for girls were meant to kind of balance a kind of athlete simple but also a certain amount of delicacy. So another aspect of the new girl that emerges in this period are books that are written specifically for girls that are a little bit different from the books that had appeared mid century books by people like louisa may alcot. In these new books for girls families were almost never there. So whereas earlier books envisioned girls kind of coming to maturity and achieving their character through the tutelage of a moerg figure, in these books often girls were on their own, parents were absent. They werent even or fans being adoptive. Like they were in school or they had been stranded by ship wrecks or things like that. And in these books girls were pictured as actively taking part in adventurous pursuits, rescuing someone in damage, surviving shipwreck. Very often they were shown shooting, not to kill people but to often get food or defend livestock or in some cases just to sort of scare away dangerous people. A lot of these books in the british context tended to focus on imperial spaces, and many of the ones but a lot of them also showed girls in boarding schools as well. Okay. So the last sort of aspect of the new girl image that im going to talk about are girl guides and girl scouts. The girl guides are the sort of british and British Imperial version of the scouting program for girls in the United States. Now its not that dont get me wrong. Im not saying that the scouts modeled themselves on an any oakley chronologically scouts and guides come after an any oakley, but im not saying they looked at an any oakley and said oh, thats what we should look like. If you wanted to come up with a practical kind of outfit thats also feminine and respectable you might come up with Something Like this. But what i do think is possible is that for girls who participated in guiding and scouting, the experiences of teamwork and leadership and outdoors adventure, the chance to exercise initiative and develop some element of Self Reliance eric owed the messages that could have been conveyed by oakley, not only in her arena performances, but also in the interviews that she gave where she encouraged women to learn how to shoot, where she promoted buy sick ling as a positive activity for women and where she extold the joys of camping and outdoors recreation. So in conclusion, its not i dont want to say, okay, here is an any oakley and here are some other pictures and wow, arent they similar because they are similar, but thats not necessarily much of an argument. Its more that we i think its useful to think about how oakleys image provided something that was kind of something that was sort of good to think with if you were a young woman trying to figure out who you were. The space between childhood and adulthood, the border land, if you will between childhood and adulthood could be seen as a time of risk and danger for young womenment and even in our own time theres a lot of if you think about books or concerns about girls with eating disorders, not pursuing their interests, theres still this sense that adolescence is a risky time and that risk is jend erred in different ways for boys and for girls. Oakleys performance and the context surrounding this performance could Work Together to produce a story where girls could imagine themselves not as marginal to the show but at the center of it, not as cap tifrs or people who needed to be rescued, but as the rescuers, as the people who could save the day. And i think that that is one of the stories, maybe one of the less obvious stories, but i think if we Pay Attention we can see it unfolding that the wild west had to tell. Thank you. Sflsh. Thank you, monica. Our final presenter of the session, martin wood side, earned his ph. D. In childhood studies from rutgers university. Hiss current book program examines how discourses of boyfriend and frontier mythology shaped each other. Material from this manuscript has been published in various journals including boyhood studies and the journal of the history of childhood and youth. He will be presenting considering the frontiers of childhood. [applause] thank you for that introduction and i thank you for having me here today. So on september 14th, 1883 the Philadelphia Inquirer ran this brief news story under the headlines missing boys, two youngsters are reading infat waited with buffalo bill. Im going to read the whole story here. Its brief. William particular insen, aged 14 years and William Stephen son are missing since monday. They both left home dressed with the intention of seeing buffalo bill. They had been in a habit of reading exciting stories such as indian tales, et cetera, and it is supposed that they must have left with buffalo bill during monday night. The mothers of the young lads are greatly worried and if the boys do not return soon, their minds might become deranged. Detectives have been notified and tell grams were sent to harrisburg to buffalo bill who is showing there today. No reply has yet been received. In 1880s newspapers ran stories like these regularly, describing how blood and thunder fiction is he dusd children to leave home and go west. Or to form roving gangs that wreaked havoc on ordinarily neighborhoods. Cody, of course, was no stranger to the dime novel which did much to make his game. Of course, buffalo bill was and is not a monolithic figure as the celebrated performers out sized persona we might say contained multituds. So while that persona was linked to responses about sensational literature, this only telds part of the story as evidenced by a separate provok actively titled 1893 news item cured of indian fever, a father prentsds his sons outfit to buffalo bill and ill just read you a piece of that. He was a middle aged man with a fatherly look who carried with him a strange assortment of wooden dag diverse and rusty pistols. He also had cart ridges, one or two red feathers and a leather belt. You may have these, he said, as he pushed them over to the colonel. My son has no further use for them. The wild west has killed all his desire to eat the flesh of the red man and become another terror of the plains. These two articles hint at the complex relationship between buffalo bill and 19th century notions of childhood. In the philadelphia da inquirer article enticing good boys to leave their homes. In the second article he plays a different role. When it came to the production and promotion of Buffalo Bills wild west cody and his Business Partners were well aware of these conflicting impulses and reactions. The show underwent significant changes in the ten years between the two news stories. And buffalo bill and his partners worked hard to maintain the appeal of their attraction to audiences young and old. More proudly, though, Buffalo Bills varied connections to children and childrens culture gestures to the fluid relationship between the frontier and childhood in american Popular Culture at large, articulating broader negotiations about race, gender and power in the late 19th century and beyond. In 1889 Theodore Roosevelt described the winning of the west where doubled as a celebration of ideal iced anger sacks on mass lynnty. Turner would tease out these narratives more vividly four years later in his landmark essay, the significance of the fran tear in american history. Both roosevelt and turner offered recollect ongsz of americas past but more importantly looked to the future. And their contributions to sustaining power frontier mythology have been much discussed. However, i argue this mapping of the frontier is a place where american character was produced. Deeply connected to notions of childhood and particularly boyhood as it was to man hood. In the final decades of the 19th century americans ideas about childhood interacted vigorously with one another to inform National Identity in ways that have been largely overlooked. There is the many sides of buffalo bill there. Im always gratified to see this image, actually, in my hotel. There he is sort of friend of the american child and thats his auto biography where hes indian killing dime novel hero. He is hes able to play these and other roles. Where was i . So my argument builds on the striking similarity between the rhetoric of frontier historians like roosevelt and turner and the comp iran yes, sir movement. Turner manned the frontier as a place where the european selts her confronted the primitive world with this collision between the savage and civilized yielding the zwipgt active american character. And theres a quote there his essay talking about this. The relationship between savage and 1i68 iced was equally quit cal to late 19th century childhood. Psychologists stanley hall whose add less engs published in 1904 both named and identified the life stage we all now take for granted. And sort of much as turner is describing the frontier here, you know, hall is also describing then the way the adolescent is created by savage and civilized coming together, right, to create the distinctive american and then the distinctive adolescent. In fact, the story he wanted to tell about the frontier was remarkable similar to the story men like hall wanted to tell about childhood and adolescence as especially pertained to boys. For turner spreading the spread of American Civilization happened through occupation of the savage frontier. For hall developing a generation of powerful american men meant allowing anger sacks on boys to make most of the savage world and their raf age selves. They actually had access to the savage within which they could use to develop into a better self. The dynamic figure of buffalo bill provides a between as buffalo bill cody presented as the hero, a hero who had a considerable influence on American Children. As a performer in dime novels on the stage and most notably in the wild west arena he provided a unique model of childhood. Buffalo bills wild west offers a vivid example of how adults imagine the relationship between childhood and the frontier and also how the resulting cultural mayor tifs were received and responded to by large numbers of actual children. A lot of memoirs have this sort of wisconsinful description of experiencing the show and how that stayed with them. With its long ten tour extending into the first deck ate of the 20th century Buffalo Bills wild west told no single story. The central theme was the settling and civilizing of the west. And cody and company tapped into a collective fervor for the past and a shared dream of White American con quest and prosperity. On one hand it promised fantasy and after all, what else was buffalo bill modeling but cowboys and indians, certainly informed if not created. At the same time the show marketed itself as more than mere performance. Living history and opportunity to see the frontier quote unquote as it was precisely at the moment when as turner suggests western migration had reached and there was no fran tear left to see. The show and the iconic figure of cody himself was built on the idea that frontier life developed american boys into the right kind of american men. At the same time it suggested that this fran tear life had become unattainable. The only way to experience it was through reenactment. In this way it offered a conflagration of Human Development and thee at rick cal performance. This history casts the west methic space forever young, a space where robust specimens of much like cody himself into powerful vision of american mass lynnty. And i think actually this image shows that, some of that. But back to the settle hers cabin. This was in many of the programs, and its often reproduced. But i like the inset there. So after buffalo bill helped save the family from the indian inkurgs, theres a sort of passing the torch there with the young boy on the inset image. Of course hes holding a gun. What else would he do . For the generations of children who couldnt experience the frontiers, it serve as a vital conduit, refen forcing the bond between child and frontier it played a crucial role in defining american identity in the late 19th century. Encountering the show American Children could be both entertained and educated. At the same time some of the shows young performers and audience members found unintended flexibility in the narrative. Ill touch on those a little bit toward the end here. Threw performance these child performers simultaneously reproduced vision of dominant mass lynnty and american imperialism and also created space for alternative or counter narratives. So codys appeal to children was strongly connected to his own methic status. He writes that codys father allowed his son to go around and in fact billy always hung his pistol with his hat. He prized and always kept in perfect order. When out laws come to steel his fathers horses cody shoots one dead holding the others at bay until help arrived. In both books the rugged and dangerous west helps cody develop from typical boy into robust american hero. This story of course had, you know, contained a potential pair docks of buffalo bill celebrated how the frontier could turn boys into successful men. At the same time the rhetoric ran the risk of supporting the notion that Buffalo Bills wild west would entice boys to run away. Inside the ayeena they extold these youthful adventures. As we also heard earlier they also stressed education. And outside of the arena cody and his partners stressed that Educational Value of the show addressing child spectators and their adult caretakers alike. In 1898 buy son courier im pretty sure i found this here cut in the shape of a large bias on head presents one example. For the childrens eyes, informing the reared, and this is a quote, your parents will campaign duty with pleasure by taking you to see it, and thats the show theyre talking about. Educated by this experience it reads sensible boys will not be misled by demoralizing blood and thunder stories, though they will remain stalwart citizens ready to defend thats my synopsis of the book. By 1898 cody and company had successfully woven stories into sacred cause. In the buy son courier the story of the west is the story of america, a narrative in both children and their patients, and it reads what the children see of Buffalo Bills wild west they will appreciate, understand and remember. What parents see they will wish their children taught. So Buffalo Bills wild west demonstrates not only how it was entertainment and pseudo history but also how children themselves interact with these narratives. Child performers were actually a little known hallmark of the show. Im going to look at a few of them. Johnny baker searched the longest tenure of any child performer. In 1876 at seven years old he saw buffalo bill on stage. He idled cody and ended up more or less be adopting by the famous he performed as a marksman at 14, but on on into adulthood wild west promotional literature expressed his youthful vigor. He describes him as a typical boy of the type only produced in america. Baker noticed him in full possession of that ehasty which marks the young fran tears man. As weve seen in a laboratory of the frontier boys such as baker become men like cody, growing up with the country and the nation itself, possessing that Self Reliance to succeed in the harvest of environments and the conscious strength to master the task at hand. Baker can perform fetes of marksmanship that most folks couldnt. The rhetoric of romantic or natural childhood becomes more pronounced in the native american child performers. The standardbearer of romantic childhood, bushing rights that the boy is marry of the man is not more truly kpefrply fied than the case of the ipdian boys. These boys display a victim and go which nol artificial system could inculcate. Like johnny baker represents the type of mass lynnty produced by the hard ships of frontier living. That goes back to this baker is the perfect collision of savage and civilized whereas the young indian performers can only manage the savage part of the equation. Outside the arena these young performers were key players in the shows im not going to have time for this now. One thing ill really interested in is the camp around the show and how it formed as a site of performance on a daily basis. These performers in the show were interacting with people who were not in the show and Children Play a big role in this. Everyone Buffalo Bills wild west played a real frontier was erected where they pitched their tents and settled in. In this way performance was not confined to the arena. Here is johnny baker next to another child performer. Publicity materials proudly touted sevenyearold johnny best of your knowledge as the sole survivor of the wounded knee massacre and johnny accompanied buffalo bill to england in 1881 and 82. He was appear doptd. The performances of johnny and these other young show indians raised some disturbing and intriguing questions about performance and agency. Were these children reproducing scripts around them. Were they performing some behind of hybrid it mixing them with their own play scripts . Johnny bushing offers an extreme example. Many of them had grown up on indian reservations or with the show itself. Its impossible to know for certain how they understood their roles as performers. And the few roles they left behind disrupt the notion of cultural ar kooifg as purely a top down process. Again, i can go into that more later if you want to know about that. A set of interpretations. Its a little more nuanced in practice. They more closely what Robin Bernstein calls a repertoire which she writes is in constant flux. So Buffalo Bills narrative of white male American Progress was unauthored by its very or multiauthored, filtered through the broad dimensions of his life story. Imagine through these cultural mechanisms Buffalo Bills wild west presented opportunities for actors to perform the central themes of this narrative without producing any single unified story. Many of these opportunities came outside the arena and unfortunately many of them failed to appear in records of Buffalo Bills wild west. So, you know, records of older men recalling times when they were boys playing outside the arena with performers. There are a few of those, but there must have been a lot more of that. Remaining accounts do suggest child performers and spectators of the show had ample opportunity to structure their own children of course are not passive recipients of these kinds of narrative. Rather they respond to them as most notably through the act of play. Whether it be city Children Playing with young show indians outside of Buffalo Bills while west in the 18 t90s giving shape to american fran tear mistos from the ground up. And thats basically it. Theres just a couple more examples of other ways where we can see this reverb ragsz of buffalo bill and childhood and scouting and toy gun play. Thank you very much. [applause] thank you. Julia, monica and mafrt infor three really interesting pafrps that can take us in a lot of directions. Im just going to open it up for questions, comments and discussion. If you want to come up to the front so we can see your faces. Questions . Yes. Do we have microphones coming . Was that a thing thats happening . We have a question. So i appreciate what roouf brought up. Its got all sorts of thoughts going through my head and also thoughts that go back to what patty limb rick was talking about a pair docks. Ive always kind of looked at, fram, an any oakley and i think we can see that with lilian smith even more in some ways as being sort of the beginning of a new woman, not so much the new girl or even johnny baker being the new boy. You know, you see the creation of that in the United States with the girl scouts, as you pointed out, which is really interesting, boy scouts, which you point out. But im thinking about an any oakley and im thinking she is pair docks cal. She opposed women sufficient rage, she dressed she did he murl, very victorian and she did some decidedly unvictorian things. Shooting as well as men. Confronting them on the field of contest, shooting better than them. And then going out buy sick ling as you point out and then also jumping over tables. Have you seen those pictures of her jumping other tables. Its decidedly more vigorous. So i see that. But then 1904 i think you showed the picture of the woman playing croquet or the girl playing croquet, but by 1910 were seeing women riding bucking brongos and theyre riding bulls and even Goldie Griffiths is demonstrating fisticuffs. It seems to me theres something happening there that moves very quickly beyond the realm of the pick to herian and that an any and some of the other people of the wild west helped usher that in. Youve seen the picture, the beveragey of wild west girls, perhaps, poster, and women are doing remarkable things on the backs of horses. So im not sure how i react to that to what you said this reinforcement, its moving them forward but enforcing some more victorian values. It seems to me women are breaking the bonds in many ways in Buffalo Bills wild west helps them do that, perhaps an any. So i dont know where im going with this, but i just wanted to see if we got some reaction on this because i really see at the museum women coming and theyre resonating to seeing these stories about an any and the other women and theyre saying, yeah, this is why buffalo bill still matters. So anyway. I was wonder if you are aware that an any oakley loved to ride a ike in glass goe, scotland . Are you aware that an any oakley learned to ride her bike in glasgow, scotland. I actual dl know that. Pause i may have missed some of what you said because im a bit deaf but i wanted to point that out. Also, another performer that we went to there was johnny no neck. Id like to state that having seen various sources from the newspapers, various press statements, i dont believe it. I would like to specifically allege he was not son of chief no neck. I know that i saw patty limb ricks hand up. This is sort of a public communication moment because im going to ask if you guys have worked with k through 12 teachers on the things youve been presenting because it seems like that would be a spectacular audience for if k through 12 teachers had the case studies that youve presented to use. But i wanted to ask because you ne quite know whats happening with audiences. Would there be a danger that your studies, and im thinking of all of you here, would actually add anxious self consciousness to a group of young people in historical era where anxiety is a nervousness about identity, concerns about figuring out where they fit in the world, so on, would it actually be a bad idea for you to talk to k through 12 teachers . Because you might introduce studies and case stories that might make them even weirder than they are at a nervous age. Its not getting any easier for anybody to navigate these ages, so thats the question. I actually have something i havent actually worked with k through 12 teachers on anything about this, but i am i have a couple of contacts in girl scouts of america in my local community, and weve talked a little bit about trying to develop some programs for girl scouts about this. And we havent exactly figured out where were going to go with this. But for me in some ways because scouting girl scouts have very distinctive institutional culture, which i think enables it might help sort of enable young women to think through and talk over those possible contradictions in a way that may be in a k through 12 setting would be difficult. And i also kind of feel like i dont know about your states, but im from wisconsin and schoolteachers are feeling a little bit thrown back on the defensive, and theres a lot of pressure on them to sort of cover content, but there you know, theres not a lot of space in there for any kind of history at all. So i do know some k through 12 teachers and weve kind of battered a few ideas around, but i think probably the most immediate opportunity that i have for bringing this to new other audiences, and i would love to see what some girl scouts make of this. I would. I have two questions. One for oh i have not spoken directly to k through 12 educators about lilian, but i have talked to some of my students, my undergraduate students who are just about to go on to get their teaching credentials. So i asked them, hey, what if anything do you see about her story that is translateable to curriculum for students that young. And even in a relatively well, very im from los angeles so its about as liberal as you can get. The problem is were still not quite there in terms of being able to discuss the coopting of native american identities at the turn of the last century. Thats one thing. And the second thing, the positive what i was able to do was speak to the occasional undergraduate class, history class about history graefrs and just letting them know that just because what you see is a printed word or statement about somebody in history, if something strikes you as interesting accident dive deep because just because its in print doesnt mean its true. Things get passed along. These things about lilian that have been attached to an any oakley and so many others in Buffalo Bills wild west for so long have made them true and theyre not. She havent native american. She wasnt a lot of things. Thats just one thing. I have two questions, one for martin. Did you ever find a followup on whether the two boys resurfaced . And have you heard of any other cases of that . I mean, weve always heard about that in recent years about running away to join the circus. Did buffalo bill set the pattern on that . I mean, you know, these newspapers were fiction playing this up. But it really did happen, right. People really did want to run away into the west. They described special detect tifs preventing children from getting on the boat. This did happen. And even doc car ver would talk about how he ran away to go west. It wasnt even running away always in those story. It was kind of making your way but as a very young man. So i mean, it did happen. And it became increasingly a concern as middle class childhood became sort of entrenched in american culture. And all of a sudden it was seen as running away. This is a dangerous thing. Youre going to be lured into a false like alcot writes about this in eight cousins, the lure of conventional literature, kwensing boys in particular to think outside of the middle class family and go down zasous paths. Its part of that reaction. And it really it did happen and it was a big fear, a larger fear than i think it actually happened. Yeah. I think this is a really interesting moment about when theres actually confined of a cultural discussion going on over how much supervision should children have. And you can kind of see this in, for example, tom sawyer and the adventures of huck elberry fin. What are boys going to do when you leave them alone, is that good, bad, are they going to develop character. I think thats happening and i think theres also an older, you know, possibly even going back to, you know, the medieval period kind of this suspicion of theater and show people generally that they are outside the boundaries of community normalcy, family, and all those institutions. They come, they go. Theyre heater oh genius spaces. And so i think theres also that element going on here in these nar tifls of boys running off to join the wild west. My name is monday take lay day kin. Monica, this is for you. When you put an any oakleys picture next to the girl scouts picture, bingo, that was something that just hit me. And if you dont mind, id like to give your name to the woman who heads up the wichita girl scouts. And i think she would be very interested in what you are showing and what youre starting to talk about. Thank you. Please do. I can give you my card after this. And this actually reminds me of something i want to go back to something patty said. I think one interesting place that could be explored here is are guns. Guns are a place cody and an any oakley are a good chance to talk about guns and guns are a place where academic historians historians generally and other people who are not historians can kind of come together and talk about what do guns mean in america. Guns are very powerful in multiple ways and whether you fear them or love them or suspicious of them. I think talking about and i think guns for women are also really its sort of fraught. So i think, you know, talking about what does gun ownership mean, what does shooting mean as a sport. How should young women feel about guns. Having that conversation is really important, and i think an any oakley and to a lesser extent just the wild west in general could be a really neat way of exploring that. We have two questions. I just wanted to say that my grandfather was one of those boys that did run away from home from a small coal mining town, mount caramel, pennsylvania to philadelphia. He was 12 years old, and he got on a Freight Train with two friends. They were 12 and 13. Went to philadelphia. Went to the wild west to see buffalo bill. Buffalo bill had pulled up the side of the tent so that these little boys could see the show. They just had thought that they might be able to catch sight of this famous man. And so from the time itself a little girl he told us the story of seeing buffalo bill at this show. The other thing he talked about throughout his life was a few years later being in service in world war i. So he was a little boy that was so influenced by the personality of william f. Cody and in a very good way. And the reason im here and passionate about this museum is because of the story that Wilbur Morris told his granddaughter. We have someone who has been waiting very patiently. One row in front dr. Warren. First of all, kudos to a guy taking Early Childhood, not many men are in Early Childhood and i really thank you for it, Child Development. Over here know me and they know fred gar low and they knew freds brother bill gar low cody. They both went to my kids schools and presented exactly what you guys are saying. And california, im from california. Its very much girl scout in california. Girls are very much involved in sports. And the kids have london road the horses in the rodeo in 2008. Those kids were all involved in, i think, cricket and horseback riding. Just keep it going, keep it going from generation to generation. Its there. Just keep it going. I think having kids involved in sports, involved in history builds their character. Thank you. Tell everybody your lineage, in case they dont know. Ip wasnt going to do that. Come on. Go for it. Okay. For those of you how many are you are from cody . Okay. So you know fred and bill gar low. Okay. My mother was jane cody gar low. Okay. By the way, she also rode horses clear into her 60s. So keep up the work you guys are doing in the schools, because thats exactly what we need is those kids guided into that type of thing. Thank you for sharing that with us. I saw a hand over here and then a hand in the back. Yeah. I wondered if you did any research on the cody scouts. They were a group of young boys that followed with the wild west show and they had their own uniforms and that. And then when codys show went bankrupt, they all had to walk home. But they were a prerunner of the boy scouts. Yeah. I need to know more about them, but im working a little bit now on codys contributions to american scouting, because he did he tried to form a Military College here, of course, thats one thing. And he did have the cody scouts. And early boy scout literature mentions him promise nantdel. The image i showed. Somebody mentioned how many wild west shows there were. There were a whole lot of boy scouts in the first decade. So he did have a lot to do with american scouting. And after earnest eton were forced out of the boy scouts of america, i think that was covered up. But i think he was very null trektel and indirectly in the boy scouts of america and all the scouting that happened in the first part of the 20th century. I have a picture of him eid love to see it. Ill email it to you. Please do. Thanks. Bob rye dell herement just an observation going back to what patty was saying about educating kids. No knock on boy scouts or girl scouts, but a single best history presentation ive heard this year was actually a group of 4 h kids working with teachers and talk about performance art, talk about intersection of history, learning about history period costume and guess what, shooting. Its really an amazing, absolutely extraordinary. So for any of you interested between the intersection academic k 12 and public, 4 h is much neglected and thats a shame. Now, a question for you. An any oakley question or lilian smith question. If i go to the late 19th century, i can confess i havent looked intensely or extensively for this. Do you see images of young girls, adolescent girls dressing up as an any oakley or lilian smith . Thanks. Thats a really good question and i havent seen anything like that. Theres actually a really wonderful article by an australian historian named ann mcgrath which among other things examines the popularity of mass produced an any oakley branded cow girl costumes in the middle of the 20th century. And these were extremely popular in australia. She did some et nothingography and got all these women reminiscing about their an any oakley cow girl costumes. I think that question is a really good one, and i think the answer to it would need to be con techs wal iced in a kind of larger understanding of mass grade and dressing up in childhood culture and also how those things might relate to consumer culture. Because unless youre going to have your mother like make you a costume and some moms would, but to what length are parents willing to facilitate dress up play is dress up play seen as a positive or is it like a waist of time. You know, i think there are a lot of questions there, actually. We have time for just one more quick comment. Im going to hand it to louie warren and after that please joint me in thapging all of our presenters. In terms of the photograph question, there is a photograph of a nebraska homesteader young woman. I cant tell how would she is. Late teens rs early 20s, dressed up very much in the clothing that an any oakley, the style of clothing that an any oakley would wear with a gun and its late 1880s or later and its not clear to me from the photograph that an any oakley is her model. It might be that an any oakley is using some style of cow girl dress that comes out of dime novels. Im not really sure. But there seemed to be something very powerful going on there where this nebraska homesteader girl is dressed up as a frontier heroin, right, and theres some kind of drama going on there. Is she bearing buck skins or Something Else . Its black, and i cant tell what it is. It ooks like it could be black leather or its probably a black fabric that shes bought from a dry goods store. The other great presentations. I really like them. And just the one thing that i would say that links them all together and val dates everything youre talking about is at least in my reading of the development of the wild west show, cody himself was intimately aware of all of these problems, of presenting his show to the public that first year the quote about the two boys running away from home in 1883, the newspapers were full of that stuff. And the reviews were it was the first year of the show, its ray show that is in a sense entertaining, say the reviewers, but it is a bunch of rough looking guys with a lot of guns, right. And cody has got to turn this thing into a Family Entertainment and the way you do that is you higher an any oakley, right, and you hire lilian smith. You ohio women who are really better with the guns than just about any man in the arena and then you start to say middle class women will start to say i think i could take my family to this show and then youre in the money. If youre cody then youre really in the money. It val dates everything youre talking about here. Really great job. Terrific. Thank you. Thank you. Wll. Welcome everyone to the final event of whats been a terrific three days. You start to plan these things and you think well have this person and that person. There was this moment when we started to put the program on to paper and said they have 36 different speakers on this thing and it became exceeded our expectations certainly and so thank you to everyone for all the terrific presentations. So thanks, very much. And this