Cody's last stand: Masculine anxiety, the custer myth, and the frontier of domesticity in Buffalo Bill's Wild West

Western Historical Quarterly

Volumn 34, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 49-69

  Warren, Louis S ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34547552097     PISSN: 00433810     EISSN: 19398603     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/25047208     Document Type: Article

References (85)

1. Richard Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth Century America (New York, 1992), 76
2. Don Russell, The Lives and Legends of Buffalo Bill (Norman, 1960), 376. Russell mistakenly argued that the 1893 Wild West Show with the "Battle of Little Big Horn" finale, "proved so successful that it remained virtually unchanged for nearly a decade."
3. Richard White, "Frederick Jackson Turner and Buffalo Bill," in The Frontier in American Culture, ed. James R. Grossman (Berkeley, 1994), 7-66, for quote see 29
4. See also Brian W. Dippie, Custer's Last Stand: The Anatomy of an American Myth (Missoula, 1976), 91
5. Joy S. Kasson, Buffalo Bill's Wild West: Celebrity, Memory, and Popular History (New York, 2000), 244-8
6. Geoffrey C. Ward, The West: An Illustrated History (Boston, 1996), 375. See the caption to the illustration
7. These arguments are distilled from Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation, 76-83
8. Richard White, "Frederick Jackson Turner and Buffalo Bill"
9. Jonathan D. Martin, "'The Grandest and Most Cosmopolitan Object Teacher': Buffalo Bill's Wild West and the Politics of American Identity, 1883-1899," Radical History Review 66 (1996): 92-123
10. For Wild West as key to the Chicago World's Fair, see the 1893 show herald, James W. Wojtowicz, The W. F. Cody Buffalo Bill Collector's Guide with Values (Paducah, KY, 1998), 92
11. W. Tucker, The Grand Duke Alexis in the United States of America (1872
12. reprint, New York, 1972), 150-90
13. Ned Buntline's Buffalo Bill, The King of Border Men appeared as a serial in Street & Smith's New York Weekly in 1869-70, and was syndicated by hundreds of papers thereafter
14. See Ned Buntline, Buffalo Bill, The King of Border Men, ed. William Roba (1870
15. and Russell, Lives and Legends of Buffalo Bill, 153-5, 160-1
16. William F. Cody, The Life of Hon. William F. Cody Known as Buffalo Bill (1879
17. reprint, New York, 1991), 145 (hereafter Life of Buffalo Bill)
18. Military records establish that Codydid not become a scout until 1868, and they contain no evidence that he ever scouted for Custer. "Memorandum," 20 March 1924, "Service Record of William F. Cody," in 201 File for William F. Cody, Box 219, RG 407, National Archives, Washington, DC
19. Joseph Rosa and Robin May, Buffalo Bill and his Wild West (Lawrence, KS, 1989), 23. Custer's 1872 memoir of his life on the Plains, which is peppered with warm references to Wild Bill Hickok, California Joe Milner, and other scouts, fails to mention Cody even once
20. George Armstrong Custer, My Life on the Plains, or Personal Experiences with Indians (1872
21. But as Richard White has argued, it is fair to say that Custer himself grew his hair to look like a frontier scout, and that at the time of his death his public persona - long-haired and buckskin clad - represented the soldier's attempt to mimic Buffalo Bill, who was already a dime novel hero and theatrical stage star by 1876. White, "Frederick Jackson Turner and Buffalo Bill," 39
22. Martin, "The Grandest and Most Cosmopolitan Object Teacher," 105
23. Programs for Buffalo Bill's Wild West (hereafter BBWW Program) 1883-1885 at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, WY (hereafter BBHC) have no Custer reenactment
24. Henry Blackman Sell and Victor Weybright, Buffalo Bill and the Wild West (New York, 1955), 156
25. The show went overseas in 1887, returned to the U.S. for 1888, then went overseas again from 1889 through 1892. It returned to Europe again, for four years, in the early 1900s. Because very few Americans saw Cody's show overseas, its content there did little to shape his American image, and I will not analyze European performances in detail. Nevertheless, it is worth observing that the Custer reenactment was absent from many of the legendary European appearances. It was not performed in London during the long season of 1887, nor in Paris at the Universal Exposition in 1889, nor during much of the continental tour in 1890, fot example. Wojtowicz, W.F. Cody Buffalo Bill Collector's Guide with Values, 10-47
26. After February 1887, the show did not reprise the Custer segment in the U.S. until late in the 1893 season, at the end of August. Kasson, Buffalo Bill's
27. Martin, "The Grandest and Most Cosmopolitan Object Teacher," 101
28. for masculine anxiety in the period, see John Higham, "The Reorientation of American Culture in the 1890s," in Writing American History: Essays on Modern Scholarship, ed. John Higham (Bloomington, IN, 1970), 79
29. for masculinity and race, Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917 (Chicago, 1995), 10-5
30. Gender studies have provided some of the most intriguing reexaminations of western and American history in recent years. I have been influenced by the following: Matthew Basso, Laura McCall, and Dee Garceau, Across the Great Divide: Cultures of Manhood in the American West (New York, 2001)
31. Lee Clark Mitchell, Westerns: Making the Man in Fiction and Film (Chicago, 1996)
32. Susan Lee Johnson, Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush (New York, 2000)
33. Bederman, Manliness and Civilization
34. See Nellie Snyder Yost, Buffalo Bill: His Family, Friends, Fame, Failures, and Fortunes (Chicago, 1979), 135
35. also Wojtowicz, W.F. Cody Buffalo Bill Collector's Guide with Values, 13-6
36. For descriptions of the scene, see "Royalty at the 'Wild West,'" The Era (UK) 7 May 1887, 15
37. "Buffalo Bill," The Globe (Toronto), 19 August 1885, clipping in Series VI: G, Box 1, Folder 15, BBHC
38. The congruence between the show and Cody's life was well known, and widely accepted. See for example "Buffalo Bill Arrives Sunday," Winnipeg Telegram (Manitoba), 20 August 1910, clipping, Series VI: G, Box 1, Folder 15, BBHC
39. The literature on this subject is enormous. See Richard Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860 (Middletown, CT, 1973), esp. 116-45
40. James Axtell, The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North America (New York, 1985)
41. June Namias, White Captives: Gender and Ethnicity on the American Frontier (Chapel Hill, NC, 1993)
42. John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America (New York, 1994)
43. For Oakley's career, see Isabelle S. Sayers, Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill's Wild West (New York, 1981), 23, 76
44. For conservative spectacle: Tracy C. Davis, "Shotgun Wedlock: Annie Oakley's Power Politics in the Wild West," in Gender in Performance: The Presentation of Difference in the Performing Arts, ed. Laurence Senelick (Hanover, NH, 1992), 140-53, see p. 29
45. In this sense the scene harkened to traditions of American melodrama. David Grimstead, Melodrama Unveiled: American Theater and Culture, 1800-1850 (Chicago, 1968)
46. also Robert C. Allen, Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture (Chapel Hill, NC, 1991), 81-7
47. Caroll Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America (New York, 1985), 181
48. "Women and the home represented stability in a rapidly changing society, and women were forced into a mote circumscribed position to facilitate the transition to an industrial society." Joyce Warren, quoted in Tracy Davis, "Annie Oakley and Her Ideal Husband of No Importance," in Critical Theory and Peformance, ed. Janelle G. Reinelt and Joseph R. Roach (Ann Arbor, 1992), 229-312, for quote see 302
49. Judith R. Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (Chicago, 1992)
50. For Cody's interest in centaurs, see Ralph D. Blumenfeld, R.D.B.'s Procession (New York, 1935) 32-3
51. "Buffalo Bill and Doc Carver Rocky Mountain and Prairie Exhibition," 1883, n.p. MS 6 BBHC
52. The Era, 23 April 1887, Johnny Baker Scrapbook, DPL
53. W.F. Cody, Story of the Wild West and Camp Fire Chats (Richmond, VA, 1888), 721
54. Stella Adelyne Foot, Letters from Buffalo Bill (Billings, MT, 1954), 15
55. Page DuBois, Centaurs and Amazons: Women and the Pre-History of the Great Chain of Being (Ann Arbor, 1982)
56. Philip J. Deloria, Playing Indian (New Haven, CT, 1998), 107-9
57. Daniel Justin Herman, Hunters and the American Imagination (Washington, DC, 2001 ), 237-69
58. DuBois, Centaurs and Amazons
59. Allen, Horrible Prettiness
60. John F. Kasson, Amusing the Million: Coney Island at the Turn of the Century (New York, 1978), 6-7
61. David Nasaw, Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusements (New York, 1993), 18, 26
62. For the appeal of the Wild West show to families, see "The Wild West," Montreal Herald and Commercial Gazette (Quebec), 17 August 1885, n.p., clipping in Series VI: G Box 1, folder 15, BBHC
63. "The Wild West"(illegible attribution), clipping in W.F. Cody Scrapbook, 1887, Buffalo Bill Museum, Lookout Mountain, Colorado
64. Wojtowicz, W.F. Cody Buffalo Bill Collector's Guide with Values, 15, 17, 30
65. For furniture, see "Royal Visit to the Wild West," The Sporting Life, 12 May 1887, Annie Oakley Scrapbook, BBHC
66. In the words of one study, "Population movement was ubiquitous" in the nineteenth century. Michael Katz, Michael J. Doucet, and Mark J. Stern, The Social Organization of Early Industrial Capitalism (Cambridge, MA, 1982), 113, 119
67. Margaret Marsh, Suburban Lives (New Brunswick, NJ, 1990), 67-74
68. 1893 program, BBWW, 19
69. Jane Tompkins, West of Everything: The Inner Life of Westerns (New York, 1992), 23-45, 131-55
70. "'Buffalo Bill' at Last Stand," Chicago Daily Tribune 17 February 1905, 1
71. Sheridan Co. District Court, Civil Case 970, Cody v. Cody, Folder 2, Deposition of W. F. Cody, 23 March 1904
72. This account of the trial is condensed from depositions in Sheridan Co. District Court, Civil Case File 970, Cody v. Cody, Wyoming State Archives, Cheyenne, WY
73. C.M. Newton, 8 February 1905, Folder 8
74. Frank R. Bullard, 10 February 1905, Folder 8
75. Nancy F. Cott, Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation (Cambridge, MA, 2000), esp. 105-31
76. also "'Buffalo Bill' at Last Stand," Chicago Daily Tribune, 1
77. See the following from Chicago Daily Tribune: "Buffalo Bill Reads of Love," 19 February 1905, 5
78. "Cody's Heart Won by Press Agent?" 20 February 1905, 3
79. "Dinner for Cody Causes Disgust," 21 February 1905, 2
80. "Blow for Buffalo Bill," 28 February 1905, 3
81. "Loves Cody, Swears It," 1 March 1905, 2
82. "Mrs. Cody Again Denies," 2 March 1905, 7
83. "Cody's Sister Scores Wife," 14 March 1905, 3
84. "Col. Cody Beaten in Divorce Case," 24 March 1905, 7
85. Kasson, Buffalo Bill's Wild West, 139