Transcripts For CSPAN3 Buffalo Bills America William Cody And The Wild West Show 20170129

Actor, entrepreneur, and congressional medal of honor winner. Next on history book shelf louis warren discusses the public image of the famous and controversial figure in his biography Buffalo Bills america, william cody and the wild west show. This is recorded at the center of the American West in boulder, colorado in 2005. Its about an hour. [applause] thank you all for coming out tonight. Its great to have such a terrific crowd. Book tv is here, cspan. So, yeah. Lets hear it for book tv. We dont have an applause light up there so patty is going to wave her hat during the lecture at which point you burst into applause. You guys on the balcony will get confetti and you can throw it out at odd intervals and convey the whole spirit of this event. And people at home watching this on book tv will know how wonderful this lecture is. That would be excellent. [applause] as usual with william cody the best way to start is with the story. In the spring of 1883 william buffalo bill cody a onetime buffalo hunter and army scout, already a well known performer, held the first dress rehearsal for what would become Buffalo Bills wild west show in nebraska. According to an eyewitness when the deadwood stagecoach trundld into the arena buffalo bill invited the town council, including the mayor, a beloved but notorious blusterer, to ride in the coach. For the first two passes around the show grounds the coach rolled merrily along and its occupants waved to the crowd. On the third pass, the pawnee indian performers swept into the arena on horse back. The coach passengers were expecting it but the mules had not been advised of this part of the program according to the eyewitness. The animals surged forward, the indians in hot pursuit, the driver barely able to keep the coach wheels on the ground as it rounded the turn. When buffalo bill and his cowboys suddenly went into action as the rescue party, nobody had told the pawnees to break off the attack. Terrified by several dozen howling men on horse back and the thunder of guns firing blanks the mules picked up the pace. As the coach, indians, scouts, and cody swept past the crowd again the mayor stuck his head out the window, waved his hands, and shouted, stop help stop let us out the driver had all he could do to keep the stage on the circular course without rolling it over. The mules didnt halt until they were thoroughly winded. At that point the enraged mayor lept out of the coach and made for buffalo bill, ready for a fight. Fortunately, before he could reach cody, a local lawyer named frank evers climbs to the top of the coach. Look at them, gentlemen, he announced. Pointing to the dazed town council and the infuriated mayor. He proclaimed his pride in these men who risked their lives for your entertainment. Clothier now turned back to the coach and went after evers, who escaped. It was an uncertain beginning for an entertainment with which the already famed buffalo bill hopes to catch what he called the better class of customers. The first year on the road unfortunately wasnt much better. Despite the fact that the show already included many of the actions that made it famous, horse races, sharp shooting displays, buffalo hunt, and of course the attack on the deadwood stage. That year when the show season ended in chicago, audiences were sparse. One reviewer marveled at the audacity of william cody and his partners, who seemed to have assembled a show of ferocious looking prairie terrors for the entertainment of street urchins. Not for the first time nor for the last cody was nearly broke. And yet, as we know, Buffalo Bills wild west went on to fabulous success, becoming the best known representation of the American West and, more than that, the best known representation of the United States in most of the world. In subsequent years this traveling community numbered as many as 700 people. The show entertained north americans and europeans for 33 years. At various points appearing before the queen of england and many other notables. Codys success in Brennan Europe validated American Culture and American History as respectable entertainment and frankly as culturally significant. He was far more than the nostalgic historians and biographers have claimed. He was a National Icon and international celebrity. Back home in the closing decade and a half of the 19th century the popularity of Buffalo Bills wild west was all the more remarkable against popular anxiety at the time. Picture a nation bitterly divided between two Political Parties who are almost evenly matched from the stolen election of 1876, to the election of 1900, parties who fought bitterly over elections at every level of government. The Industrial Revolution brought on fierce labor unrest. From the great strike in 1877 during which the Pittsburgh Railroad station was burned to the ground as you see here to the haymarket bombing of 1886 some people called it what is sometimes referred to as the first terrorist strike in modern america. Certainly was called that at the time. And the pullmans strike. There were a huge number of altercations between labor and capital. What seemed to be a low level stage of civil war. Between 1881 and 1904 there were an estimated 37,000 recorded strikes. Meanwhile all those middle class men and women moving to the cities faced a series of challenges of their own, leaving farms and moving to the cities to take up jobs in offices. Middle class white men in particular were becoming clerks and managers and feared becoming over civilized in the parlance of the time. Feared that while their fathers knew nature and knew the farm they shuffled paper and they werent really men. Amidst these upheavals codys show was popular on the political right. He adored the wild west show and many of his most famous paintings of the west are based on scenes in the show. He would visit the show especially in new york and borrow cowboys and indians for poses in his studio. But it was also popular on the left. Among the wild west show fans was edward abling, the soninlaw of karl marx, and an eminent socialist in his own right. Edward abling was the first theorist to come up with a diagnosis of the cowboy condition in which he said the cowboy is as much of a slave to the capitalist as the Massachusetts Mill hand. It was sort of a cowboy proletarian. He loved the wild west show. He first saw it in new york. He wrote rave reviews of it. He spent time with the show when it visited london. He would say have i not spent days and nights in camp with them, been present at saddle up time and behind the scenes . Ridden outside the deadwood coach, slept in Buffalo Bills tent . Without question, Buffalo Bills wild west was the greatest generator of western myth prior to the invention of the movie. It not only made cody wealthy it made him the most famous american in the world by 1900. It didnt end until 1913 when he lost the show in bankruptcy court. Even then cody wrote his famed other shows until 1917. On news of his death, that year poet e. E. Cummings called to mind his vision of cody from the show. Codys signature act in the wild west show was to ride fast around the arena top speed while an assistant also on horse back threw balls made of amber into the air and cody would blast those balls from the air using his rifle. E. E. Cummings recalled Buffalo Bills defunct who used to ride a water smooth Silver Stallion and break one, two, three, four, five pigeons just like that. Jesus, he was a handsome man. So what went wrong that first year . What did cody do to make the show successful . Most of all, what does all that success tell us about america in william codys time . To answer all these questions, which are many of the questions that energized me when i began this book, the whole problem of explaining how a man goes from frontier kansas to becoming the most famous showman in the world is such a strange story. I grew up in nevada and as a child i liked two kinds of stories most of all. One, stories about the wild west. I would read books about the 19th century west and the wild west show. The other kind of story i liked was the collection of strange but true stories. It usually features tales about big foot and all kinds of other things. But this story about this guy who went from kansas to showmanship playing himself seemed the weirdest story of all in some ways. Who was he . Born William Frederick cody in 1846 in iowa he moved to kansas as a young child. After the death of his father, young will cody became a boyhood teamster. He was an antislavery jay hawker in the bleeding kansas troubles and in 1864 he joined the union army and fought briefly in the south. After the war he became a buffalo hunter for the Kansas Pacific Railroad and distinguished himself as a scout for the army in the plains indian wars. In 1869 he was discovered by the dying novelist ed bunkline which was the pen name of a well known writer and judson or buntline was renowned as the most well paid writer in america, rumored he was making 20,000 a year at the time he went west probably to find somebody to write about. He was probably looking for someone else. Probably wild bill hickock, possibly the scout frank north. And he found william cody instead. He published a story called buffalo bill, king of the border men, which was serialized in the story paper the new york weekly. By this time cody was also a hunting guide to Army Officers and wealthy tourists many of whom arrived in kansas wanting to hunt buffalo. In 1872 general sheridan invited him to guide the great plains hunt of the grand duke of russia also accompanied by george a. Custer. Thats custer on your left and the grand duke alexis in the middle. The man on the right is william cody, who wasnt actually in the studio that day. He grew kind of jealous about the picture later on and in his publicity took the photo of custer and the grand duke and had himself spliced in just to make the heroic trio work. After the hunt with the grand duke alexis, cody accepted an invitation from some of his hunting clients, including the publisher James Gordon Bennett jr. Who is the publisher of the very influential newspaper the New York Herald to visit new york society. While in new york, he saw a play in a theater not unlike the one were in where an actor named j. B. Studly was playing buffalo bill in a play alleged to be about buffalo bill ace life. According to cody he was sitting in the balcony in a box and the actor j. B. Studly announced in the middle of the play, said, ladies and gentlemen, or actually gentlemen because it was pretty much an all male audience at the time. He said, with us tonight is the real buffalo bill. And the crowd brought the house down. Cody professed great embarrassment but was ultimately persuaded later that year that he should return to new york and play himself on the stage. First he went west again, scouted for the army again, and was awarded the congressional medal of honor for fighting the sioux. It was that fall of 189 the 2 that he 1892 that he returned to the east and began his stage career in plays about the redemption of the good woman from the clutches of evil in which buffalo bill alleged the story was actually true and would say these stories are about my life and in fact they were highly fictionalized and hed always play himself. Buffalo bills combination was the name of his Theater Company. For the duration of the 1870s then he toured with this Theater Company throughout the United States. Returning to the plains in the summer to scout for the army or to guide wealthy tourists on buffalo hunting expeditions. Thats buffalo bill cody in the middle and the man on the right, on the left is ed bunkline. The man on the far right is texas jack who was another Frontier Army scout who turned his life into turned to this same career of acting and playing himself. What inspired cody to mix historical action and reenactment in this way . Without spending too much time on that question i think it is important to understand exactly codys sense of cultural longing and his intuitive grasp of a few particulars about American Culture. The first thing he understood that gave him an advantage over so many other would be performers was the importance of a storey and it was a very is particular story. Most americans knew the west as a setting for that story which was the story of the progress of civilization. Which was usually told in Elementary School classrooms, public lectures, popular articles in newspapers, from near the beginning of the 19th century onward that story was usually told in four parts. That is that all civilization it was thought advanced through stages of development beginning with hunting and progressing to herding and then going on to farming and finally commerce which would bring urban and trade. This is a very famous painting from 1892, American Progress in which you can see the story mapped out for us here. The hunters on the far left are indians and theyre being pushed off the screen by the forces of progress who are arriving miners here but, most importantly, down here i love this part. Farmers who are plowing their way west. The plow is in the road and it would take a little while to get out there but theyre not going to quit. Theyre the ones who bring in their train all of this development. We have the goddess of liberty who is stringing the telegraph wire and along with her is coming the railroad. In the far distance advancing west is a city and the commerce. Another way to think about this story is that the wilderness was being domesticated and turned into a garden and somehow the savage, dark wilderness would be turned into productive farm fields and all of this technology would somehow combine to create a grand and glorious and hopefully eternal yeomans republic. Just as important as the that was the story of the nation. Just as important to codys success here is he took that story as his own story. The nation developed in stages and so do i. I was a hunter he would say. I became a rancher. Then i got domesticated he would say and he would talk about the house he had. Ill talk about that in a few moments, and his family and so forth. So that the story of the nations progress becomes internalized to himself. Just as important to all of that was codys intuition of public doubts about this story. How could you know what was actually happening out west after all unless you went there yourself . You relied on newspapers, on dime novels, on theater productions. On paintings. Thats how you knew what was going on out west. How did you know that stuff was true . Because there was an explosion of printed material in the 19th century. The Steam Powered Printing Press makes its debut. Really expands after the middle of the 19th century. And millions of pages of newspaper print, real estate ads, autobiographies which are often fictionalized. By all of these things off the presses and the great challenge becomes how do we know what were reading is true . This development of what we call print culture was one of the things that encouraged the Development Also of a lot of fraud in particular in the west. There was no place like the west for finding advertisements for great land deals, the railroads sent out advertisements saying you can come and settle on this beautiful green land and have a great farm. You all know how the story often went. You ended up on land that was a little less than ideal for farming shall we say . Cody understood, though, Something Else about the problem of fraud and print and representation. From being in the west he came to understand that artful deception, if it was staged as entertainment, could draw a public crowd that wanted to be amused. And he learned this in part from his experiences in the west and in part from his travels in the east. Where the most popular entertainer of the day was probably p. T. Barnum. P. T. Barnum, who developed a form of entertainment in which the hoax was elevated to kind of an art form. What p. T. Barnum would do was to create some attraction, in this case the fuji mermaid which was the head of a or the torso rather of a monkey sewn to the tail of a fish. It was a hideous thing but it was so carefully sewn together you couldnt tell where stitches were. Barnum swore that he bought the thing from a sailor who came from the south seas and he would say i dont know if its true. I dont know if its legitimate. I have no idea. But take a look. 25 cents. Take a look. 25 cents right here. You can go on in. And the crowd loved it. Because they could go in and investigate the thing and make up their own mind. Even when they thought he was not presenting a legitimate attraction they enjoyed the spectacle of a carefully wrought hoax. And they appreciated his willingness to let them make up their own minds about it. As long as you werent claiming to sell the unvarnished truth and as long as your attraction was well presented enough to inspire uncertainty and fairly priced the audience would not dessert you. Barnum would say, for example, the public is inclined to be amused even when they are aware of being deceived. And it was a kind of a great spirit of mid 19th century democratic spectatorship that the audience member had the power to discern reality but beneath all those layers of fakery and if you could make a spectacle out of that you had a really live attraction. For most americans to go west was to explore the degree to which those popular representations of the west captured western reality. Those who recorded their journeys in the west often explained to their readers what they should believe about other things they had read and what they should not. If you read accounts of emigrants on the overland trail during the gold rush, theyre full of advice about which guide books you can believe and which are fraudulent. There is lots of this kind of experience of the west. Meanwhile, various individuals in the west began to make popular attractions by staging their lives as ongoing shows of western progress, dime novel plots brought to life, and inviting tourists and other spectators to decide for themselves whether the act was true or not. A past master of this form of entertainment was a friend of codys and sort of his mentor in 18671868 in hays, kansas. James butler hickock known to friends and enemies as wild bill who would often instead of dressing like this which is the way many 19th century men in kansas were dressing, you add a suit jacket on top of that and you would have the way most men in kansas were dressing, he would show up at the railroad station when the tourists came in dressed like this and start telling stories about his adventures and the tourists would hire him to guide them on some kind of trip out of town, a hunting trip, a trip to look at real estate, and so forth. In going to the stage in the east cody frequently used hickocks legend. Hickock was well known in the popular press. He used hickocks legend to draw attention to himself and in fact invited wild bill hickock to join his stage troupe in 1873 and 1874. This is wild bill hickock right here with the gun upside down clowning for the camera. William cody, and again, texas jack, they were in fact dozens of men who set about trying to create themselves and to mingle the stage and the real, to present themselves as an attraction not a monkey fish or an ape man but the ideal man. The embodyment of frontier progress. It was a vigorous competition to become that ideal man among these three figures and dozens of others weve forgotten. The scout donald mckay from the modok wars. Dashing Charlie Emmett also from out in nebraska. All of these men were on the stage in what was called at the time the scout business. It was in 1876 that cody demonstrated his mastery, though, of mingling action and reenactment. When he returned to the plains to scout for the army in the Sioux Campaign of that year. While scouting for general eugene carr he learned that custer had been killed at the little big horn. Dressing in a stage costume of black velvet with scarlet slashing and silver buttons and trim, an outfit he had worn on the stage, he rode into battle, where he killed and scalped a cheyenne man named yellow hair taking what cody claimed was the first scalp for custer. The name was subsequently mistranslated as yellow hand and cody sent the scalp and other belongings of the fallen warrior to his newly adopted hometown of rochester, new york. Where they were exhibited in the window of a shop belonging to a friend. That fall, on stage, he put on the same outfit in which he had killed yellow hair and then he had somebody dress up as yellow hair and reenacted a highly theatrical version of the killing and held up the real scalp for the audience. His stage career was in a sense a means of taking the frontier show of that heroic progress and moving it east to bigger audiences who enthusiastically debated the many questions swirling around him. Was he really who the dime novels said he was . Was he somebody pretending to be a dime novel character . Was there a real buffalo bill . If so, was this him . Was he a frontiersman . Or was he a showman . The theatrical fame wore thin. Cody had trouble attracting audiences of sufficient size and respectability. Taking yell hairs scalp proved to be yellow hairs scalp proved at best to have mixed results for him. He was widely condemned in the middle class press. Even the New York Herald who had been his biggest backers denounced it as an affront to our civilization. Stooping to savagery at the time. The theatrical world of the time wasnt really a great place for making yourself into a National Phenomenon in this kind of stage play. Theaters were frequented by two groups of people broadly speaking. At this point in the 19th century. The upper class, who went to plays about shakespeare, plays in french, and the working class. Who went to raucous theaters where all kinds of things were exhibited on stage and where men predominated in the audience and in the galleries and when the galleries up top didnt like what they were seeing theyd start hurling all kinds of things at the actors on stage including peanuts, thus the term the peanut gallery. Cody was stuck in those theaters. Thats where his fame was greatest. The middle class didnt really attend theaters. And their demographic was the one with the most rapidly increasing disposable income. So he made the move which brought him worldwide fame ultimately when he organized the wild west show and took it on the road beginning in 1883. Even more than the shows shooting and riding skills, the premier attraction was the presence of real indians. Sitting bull and his family toured with the show in 1885. Indians came to the show for reasons of their own. It was relatively good work. It allowed travel. It allowed the continuance of ceremonies and dances, banned on the reservation. To american audiences they represented the beginning of the story of progress, the primitive who would be overwhelmed by civilization in the shows drama. But, of course, indians had been with the show that first year, and much of codys success flowed from how he wrapped that story of advancing civilization around the presence of genuine indians. Most historians trace codys success to his reenactment of the battle of little big horn, but, in fact, the staging of custers defeat was a relative rarity. The finale of the show was almost always the same. It was the attack on the settlers cabin which was introduced in the shows Second Season in 1884. Why this theme, which is a theme generally of a white woman and children in a cabin in which indians attack and buffalo bill and the cowboys ride to the rescue. And sometimes there werent any white children around to put in so the indian children would sometimes play the white children inside the cabin. But why use that theme . Remember the treasure cody seeks is the middle class audience, especially middle class women. If you get middle class women to come to your show, theyll bring their husbands. Theyll bring their children. Theyll bring a lot of money. And you will retire, he loved to talk about retiring rich. That was his great dream. And he would be established as a respectable entertainer. Few middle class people actually ventured out for entertainment in this time. The phenomenon, what we call going out, that term arrived in american english about this time in the 1880s, 1890s, as people began to find ways of drawing middle class audiences out for the evening. To lure these people out you had to persuade them theyre seeing something respectable. To lure these people out, you had to show them something respectable. His show as a living exhibition of his life. He passed through every phase of frontier development. Part of the clinics of codys biography, which was reprinted in every show program, was the same of the frontier in the old days, and Buffalo Bills home in nebraska today. I was wondering why he had it written in letters big enough to be seen from an airplane. This is not an airplane. It turns out at the time you could see it from the train going past from the union pacific. He wanted his audience members who rode on the train to know when they were passing, Buffalo Bills real life ranch. You can see be seen the scene, a savage frontier of the top, this pastoral scene on the bottom. Caressing his baby daughter, in which he talks about the slayer of yellow hand is somehow domesticated by the presence of a baby. The show culminated with the scene of white family defense. The presence of genteel women in the show added to it veneer of respectability. There were women, particularly indian women in the show, taking care of indian children, and who also provided a home environment for a lot of the men providing. Cody encouraged indian families to come on the road for different reasons. The first women to be identified in the action as middleclass audiences was any oakley. Cody and his partner hired her, and her shooting was central to the shows appeal. She grew up in a hard childhood in ohio and developed remarkable skills as a hunter. In 1884, she shot 943 out of 1000 class b glass balls shot into the air. She shattered 4772 glass balls out of 5000 thrown. Men who tried similar feats were so sore that they could not finish. It took a tremendous amount of physical strength as well as skill with a gun. She mastered the masculine technology of the day, the gun, but raised it to frank butler, her manager and husband. He held the target, cigarettes between his hands, dimes, playing cards one after the other, and she would shoot them in rapid succession. He would fling them into the audience. The audience members would grab these and look at them, and a playing card with a bullet hole through the center. Her marksmanship was a demonstration of many things. Among the things she was presenting, the good woman could contain the destructive energy of the industrial world and of male profligacy cigarettes, money, cars a true woman could help her husband directed energy away from those things. And she did it in the most spectacular fashion. [laughter] historians are right to emphasize the show as a symbol of masculine power. We must take note of how much that relied on professional women performers. Cody endorsed womens suffering so that he could hire more women that wanted to be professionals. He wanted to draw more of their custom to his exhibition. Most historians see the show as an exhibit of the authentic, but it is a lure of the mixture and the fake. Cody laid real and fake stories on top of his accompaniments. He said he was in the pony express, he wasnt. He said he was custers guide. He never guided for him, and seemed to like the man much while he was alive. Even so, you had to admire the audacity of the show. For the rest of the shows life, cody managed to retain relevance to the shows audience. He extended the appeal earlier in the 1890s, developing it into Buffalo Bills wild west and congress of rough riders, incorporating russian cossacks, arab riders, and contingents of european cavalry. There are many ways of thinking about this show. It expresses americas wanting for empire. There is some truth to that. The most striking thing about the discussion of the show in the popular is how it engaged public on more familiar ground on problems of everyday living, urban living, and industrialization. The best example is brooklyn in 1894, 1 the west show set up near the ferry docks. You can follow the ferry route two see how to get to this show. The wild west set up for 6 mont hs at this site. Brooklyn was the fourth largest Industrial City in the time, also the largest immigrant city. Another 9000 brooklynites had been born in ireland, and another 3000 were the americanborn children of east german and irish immigrants. To show expressed many things the show expressed many things. It expressed middleclass white fears about savage immigrants and the city, full of slums and vice. This is the seventh cavalry charging into the lacota. This is the Brooklyn Arena in 1894. The cavalry charge forward, and the lacota will swallow them in the painting. That seventh cavalry had also been in chicago to put down the pullmans strike. Some people may have fought this and thought, yeah, strikers, indians, they are all savages and need to be put down by the army. One of these was going to popular amusement, becoming a part of a large and diverse american public. The name of the company in Army Contingents in the show were printed in show souvenirs, and full of irish and german names, Mike Gallagher the names of other naturalized immigrants who became cowboys and soldiers, or they are children. The show suggested the possibility for naturalization. Immigrants were playing a large part in american life. History did not generally included them. The same summer buffalo bill had his show, the Brooklyn Historical society was putting on for fathers day. Forefathers day is where you are encouraged to celebrate the history of new england. The Brooklyn Historical society was founded by the elite of brooklyn. They are turning away from this terrifying, to them, polyglot president , where english people arrived in the americas and colonized to the United States. Contrast that with codys pageant of frontier compact. There are lots of things we can take to criticize this presentation of history. Among them, that white guys are always in control, and that non English Speaking people are always subordinate. We can say all of that. At the same time, it brought more people under its mythological awning, a place in the larger story of history, and connected them to American History. How did cody come up with that . The search for larger audiences, to create a bigger take at the box office. You appeal to more and more people. He democratized his entertainment at the same time Frederick Turner in wisconsin were busy trying to democratize history by telling stories of immigrants arriving in the wilderness the w wilderness being won over. By the 1890s, the greatest appeal of the show was less in the arena than the community in itself. At the moment when reformers struggled to gain control of cities and settlement houses, Buffalo Bills frontier simulacrum seemed to anticipate the modern city as much as it recalled the finished frontier. There were 680 people in the wild west show that year. Journalists called it the little tinted city. It was in many respects a traveling company town, which required three trains to the imino movie animals, calfs. It required 20 miles of ropes. All of these statistics were widely touted in the press at the time. Watching the crews unloaded cars and erect equipment was a popular diversion evoking a factory production. The mobile kitchen was a favorite subject, a refrigerator, manned by 38 cooks, serving hundreds of gallons of coffee and 1000 stakes every day. This is the wild west show dining tent on the fourth of july. The camp infrastructure reinforced its vision of modernity. Journalists hailed the wild west camp for having many attributes they wished they had in brooklyn. This picture is grainy. But you can see the teepees h ere, and there are actually garden plots of flowers on the ground. One journalist said, on the wasteland there has been laid out a summer park with trees, shrubbery, and beautiful path. The wild west show publicly settled the citys torque hinges. Dark edges. The show promoted workplace temperaments, vaccination campaigns. This really struck journalists. When Public Health authorities tried to vaccinate people in brooklyn, vaccinations were so unknown and people were so suspicious that they loved their doors and poured hot water onto Public Health staff rather than take vaccinations. To watch this group of people take vaccinations seems to be something forwardlooking. Codys little tinted city suggested modernity. It was these days in the early 1890s that the electric trolley begins to run in brooklyn. It is actually quite dangerous when it starts. Dozens of people are killed because you cannot hear it coming the way you can hear horses coming. 17 people were killed in one year on one brooklyn trolley line in 1892 and 1893. This is why brooklynites became known as trolley dodgers, and their Baseball Team became known as the brooklyn dodgers. To which immigrants are flocking, because they too want to the american. This became a pseudoritual of americanization. These generators were part of that. The statue of liberty was lit up in 1896. Cody started offering shows at night lit up with Electrical Generators built by thomas edison. He got mobile generators to go through the road. They were stars of the show in their own right. The electrification of the show symbolic parallel. Hundreds of engineers would tour the show and write articles about its electrical work. The show was not only a spectacle of the past, but a harbinger of the future, the reagan recommend from the rise of civilization to technology, the maturation of her people from buffalo hunters to electrical engineers. From a managerial class be set by labor unrest, cody became a special kind of icon, a natural manager who could manage what looked like a modern city, and he came from frontier origins. The success of the whole thing suggested that corporate bosses and managers that worked for them, and among them were many children and immigrants. He suggested that to be a manager with a special place in American History. Managing people was a frontier attribute, like hunting both hunting buffalo. Buffalo bills wild west did as much for the region, but when this seems to resonate with one another, the United States brought codys dreams crashing down. His investments in mines and wyoming and movies soon took a toll. In1908 he combined his show with that of a competitor, and by 1 909, he was on the show on the block of bankruptcy court. He tried to bring the best of civilization to wyoming, trying to bring that final chapter of civilizations progress country for him. Come true for him. That his life should end being a wealthy and revered town founder. That story eluded him. In its days, wild west was a show that showed American History, but hints of its bright future, electrification to social management. A crete deal of modern u. S. s swirled out of this history. Between the garden plots and electrical generating plants that lit the ground, in the spaces between the modern tent, between office furniture, and the smoky indian teepees, Something Else flitted about, there in sparkling and alluring fragments, the future glimmered. Thanks. [applause] louis ill take questions. The folks from cspan are going to boom for questions, which is a term i love. Were going to boom for questions here. The native americans who performed in the show. Did any extensive numbers relate their experiences for only experiences orally . Did you have any access to those sources . Louis some did. Nicholas black elk tells quite a story about being in the wild west show. Also luther standing bear,s book talks about being in the wild west show. Both of them speak highly about the experience. Are other accounts that exist. I interviewed a couple of people that were descendents of indians in the show. A guy in the show with buffalo bill, you can read a book about him. There is a vast not many people left written accounts. You have to scrape to find letters and press commentary. Any of the questions over here . I have doing for the microphone i have to wait for the microphone. We wont run these poor producers reckoned. Producers ragged. I wonder if there is any evidence that Frederick Jackson turner visited the worlds fair in 1897. Louis i didnt see any evidence of that. I think turner was very nervous and the worlds fair because he was presenting a paper, and i know what that was like. And it was hot. I dont know if he visited the wild west show. I think he might have thought of it as frivolous and to not want he wanted to talk about. That is my hunch. Theodore roosevelt felt a bit worried about his own relationship to the show. The truth is out there, as somebody said on one Gray Television production once. Great Television Production once. Anyone dont there . Be brave, be bold. Okay, go ahead. With respect to all of these different groups in the show, do you know if there were social hierarchies in the show itself . Where the indians treated equal ly . Louis indians found it was the best place to work in their experience of the reservation. A a lot of difference was shown to them deference was shown to them. With the dining tent, cody would not allow them to be given inferior food, although once in a while, a cook when trying that. There were tensions between cowboys and indians at times. In general, that happened. But there is a rough collegiality that arises, so when there are brawls between townspeople, everybody joins in together. Is a circus tradition. The other thing you have to remember about the wild west show is that a lot of the cowboys were actually indians who dressed up as cowboys. Some of them were married to l acota women. There are a lot of family connections that cut across as well. There is a lot of spanish spoken around. The hierarchy thing seems to dissolve after time when you have been working with people. Down here . Lets wait for the mic. Play some interlude music. I have two questions, one of them is academic and one is not. Richard weiss, it was always fun i was wondering if you could agree with his interpretation of buffalo bill. I was wondering how you are engaging Buffalo Bills fame and lasting memory. What is his name recognition as you are traveling around . Do you find that he is to better doing better than hugh grant . [laughter] louis one would. Would hope. Your first question, richard argues that the wild west shows presented in inverted version of the conquest. That is, in real life, White America has essentially waged an aggressive series of campaigns against indians and that stolen indian land. In the wild west show, it is always indians invaded white peoples home territory, and the white people no choice but to respond but equivalent force. That is absolutely true. Richard is right about that. The issue is that interpretation was completely pervasive in the culture. You cannot read about indian wars without some journalist piping up same, in these poor settlers that wanted to move to oklahoma and claim their acres of land, there should be enough land for everybody. You could not read the kind of coverage before the wild west show. It is not right, but it explains the larger the lord of the story. How is Buffalo Bills doing . People say, is he some kind of circus guy . Or they have some kind of vague idea. And there are all of these people that pipe up with, my greatgrandfather saw him. I had a friend who sent that his greatgrandfather did a load of things. The story he would always talk about is seen Buffalo Bills show in leeds. I had two neighborly elders who were active in the gay rights campaign, active civil rights. I met them at a block party. They asked, what are you doing . I said, writing a book about Buffalo Bills. Descend oh, hes my hero even among people you think were not reading much western history, key is still around as a vague presence. I was living in france for the past five years, and they are fascinated with him. To fill out and read and think your discount is because of the french fascination with buffalo bill, and him coming to france with his own train. The wild west show in disneyland, paris. [laughter] it is great. You have to go. I was sitting there with my kids. Some things were not as realistic as you would like, but the writing was tremendous. The indians were u. S. And canadian indians. I interviewed one from a reservation in montana and said, how is it working in the show . He said, i get paid to be an indian. Indian performers today tour europe with dance troupes and so forth. Very popular. I give lectures like this and people tell me, i met a troupe of black feet dancers. Im curious about buffalo bill because i think he died broke. Then he was resurrected. Now he is buried in colorado. Howyou say a few words on that came about and how he was buried in colorado . He made terrible investments. As im sympathetic. He felt that he should be able to invest in mining in just about anything and it would be successful as show business. It just never was. His gold mines started turning out tungsten instead of gold. They lost huge amount of money and he borrowed against the wild west show to fund his other businesses. When he died, he had very little money. Hadwiffee, louisa, she money, she had several properties. He died in denver at her sisters house. And henry to hammond, the publisher of the dever nver post, he offered to pay for his funeral if he be buried at lookout mountain. Louisa agreed. They werer sti still worried the oulddents of the town w steal his body. It was in his well he wanted to be very there. They blasted a shaft in the side of the mountains i dont know how deep it is. Curator. Sk the museum steel plate on time. During the 1920s they posted a National Guard tank over the top of that when then there were rumors that the american lujan was going to make midnight raid. There are some people say to me, the hit his body is not in there. Its gone. He takes a place with all the other great sort of enigmatic plainsmen. Crazy horse. And not to mention celebrities like elvis. Where is he . I think he is buried on amount. Thats more or less of how he got there. I think we are out of time. We are. Does anybody want any books assigned . I know people want books signed. We really want [applause] thank you. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] you are washing American History tv. On americanrogram history every weekend on cspan 3. Cspan us on twitter history for information on our schedule and to keepwi