Buffalo Bill

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Buffalo Bill in 1911 Buffalo Bill Cody signature.svg

William Frederick Cody , called Buffalo Bill (born February 26, 1846 in Le Claire , Iowa Territory , †  January 10, 1917 in Denver , Colorado ), was a famous bison hunter and one of the founders of modern show business .

Life

Advertising poster in the USA
Trier Carnival Order from 1907
Advertisement for the last tour of Germany

William Frederick Cody grew up near Fort Leavenworth , Kansas . His parents had married in 1840 and settled in Le Claire. After Martha, Julia and Samuel came their son William, followed by Eliza, Helen, May and Charlie. Following the death of their eldest son, who died from a fall at the age of twelve, the Le Claire family left and moved to Salt Creek Valley. Since Cody's father opposed slavery , he was attacked twice and had to go into hiding. He moved to Lawrence and was only able to keep in touch with his family sporadically. Cody's father died in 1857. The now eldest son, William, took care of his mother and siblings as a half- orphan.

Bison hunting - bison lie dead in the snow (1872)

As a child, William Frederick Cody worked for the company Russel & Majors (later Russel, Majors & Waddell) as a train driver, wagon master, pony express rider and coachman. As a young man, he participated in the Colorado gold rush . He later worked for the Pony Express and then as a scout for the Union in both the American Civil War and wars against the Indian tribes of the Kiowa and Comanche in Kansas . Between 1867 and 1868 he provided meat to workers on the Kansas Pacific Railway . Here he proved himself as a very successful bison hunter and received his nickname "Buffalo Bill". From 1868 to 1872 he occupied the US Army as a scout ( Scout ). In 1872, as a civilian scout of the 3rd US Cavalry, he received the Medal of Honor , the highest order of valor in the USA. 24 days after Buffalo Bill's death, on February 5, 1917, the medal was revoked because it should not have been awarded to the civilian William Cody, the same reason applied to Mary Edwards Walker . In 1989, however, the US Army reassigned Cody to the medal.

In 1876, after the Battle of Little Bighorn , he made himself available to the US Army again as a scout for a campaign of revenge against the Indians. In the battle on Warbonnet Creek he killed the sub-chief Yellow Hand (actually Yellow Hair) and scalped him with the exclamation: “The first scalp for Custer !” Yellow Hand remained the only victim of the battle next to his horse, which the newspapers in the east considered great battle was exaggerated.

Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill 1885
Buffalo Bill (left) with US Army General Nelson Appleton Miles inspecting an Indian camp on the Pine Ridge Reservation (detail of a photograph by John CH Grabill, 1891)

After meeting Cody, Ned Buntline , an American journalist from New York , began to publish plays, reports and dime books about "Buffalo Bill", which became very successful commercially. Several episodes were significantly exaggerated at the time and were instrumental in forming the clichés about the Wild West that are still valid today .

Cody, who had already joined artist groups in 1872 and had appeared in the plays of Ned Buntline, saw his economic opportunity, separated from Buntline and founded his own Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in 1883 , which was entirely in the unrealistic style of the publications by Ned Buntline and corresponded to others (see also Völkerschau ). The show featured a huge array of people and animals, and he managed to get famous Indian chiefs like Sitting Bull to take part.

Cody also exported his show to Europe. In July 1890 Cody camped in Braunschweig on Leonhardplatz (from July 16 to 21). The train consisted of 30 railway wagons "with hundreds of Indians, cowboys, horses, buffalo ...". The chroniclers reported audience records in the Braunschweiger Stadtanzeiger : 13,634 viewers on July 16, 15,937 on July 17, 18,316 on July 18, 18,536 on July 19, 17,743 on July 20 and 12,000 on July 21. The event was overshadowed by two accidents, the death of a Sioux Indian and the injury of a boy by buffalo horns.

At the beginning of September 1890 Cody made a guest appearance in Bremen and entertained the astonished population with his performances. He competed against local athletes on the cycling track on Schleifmühle (street) and promptly lost to a master baker from Bremen. In 1891 he made a guest appearance with his show in the southern part of Karlsruhe . The residents of the district were then given the nickname "Südstadtindianer", which they still wear today. In 1892 he performed his show in the Paris Bataclan .

During another European tour, Buffalo Bill performed in Trier on June 16, 1906 , which led to the Trier Carnival choosing its Wild West Show as the motto for the following session .

After the turn of the century, public interest in his show waned - the new medium was the emerging cinema. Cody also founded a film company - but it was not very successful. Investing in nonexistent silver mines and his largesse eventually ruined him.

Buffalo Bill had been a member of the Freemasonry Association since March 5, 1870 . His lodge ( Platte Valley Lodge No. 32 ) is based in North Platte . His grave, donated by the Masonic Lodges of Colorado , contains Masonic inscriptions.

The city of Cody

In the repeated attempts to found his own city, William Cody lost a lot of money. The town of Cody in the Bighorn Basin in the US state of Wyoming was founded by him and some investors in 1896 and named after him. This is where Cody's birthplace has been moved, the historic Irma Hotel with the old Cody bar, the Buffalo Bill Historical Center , the log cabin of the Original Buffalo Bill Museum and the Buffalo Bill Cody - the Scout monument from 1923 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney , the founder of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. The Buffalo Bill Historical Center contains several museums: The Buffalo Bill Museum , The Plains Indian Museum , The Whitney Gallery of Western Art, and The Draper Museum of Natural History . In addition to sculptures, The Whitney Gallery of Western Art also houses numerous pictures by well-known painters from the Wild West, such as George Catlin , Karl Bodmer , Albert Bierstadt , Thomas Moran , Charles M. Russell and Frederic Remington . The Buffalo Bill Dam was also named after him.

death

William F. Cody died on 10 January 1917 at the presence of family and friends at his sister's house in Denver , Colorado to kidney failure . He converted to the Roman Catholic Church on his deathbed and was baptized by Father Christopher Walsh of Denver Cathedral the day before his death . After his death he received several honors, including from King George V , the German Kaiser Wilhelm II and President Woodrow Wilson . The Indians from the Pine Ridge Reservation, who lost their most dedicated advocate through his death, also paid tribute to him in an obituary: “You should know that the Sioux people had found a good and loyal friend in Buffalo Bill. Our hearts are heavy with grief over his loss. Only one consolation remains for us; the thought that one day we will meet again before Wakan Tanka , before our Creator in the Eternal Hunting Grounds. ”Cody was buried on Lookout Mountain, Colorado in Golden, Colorado , west of the city of Denver, at the foot of the Rocky Mountains. The exact location of his grave was determined by his sister Mary Decker. There was a dispute over the place of burial with the city of Cody, which he founded. There was even a $ 10,000 prize for bringing the body to Cody. As a result, his grave was guarded by the armed National Guard.

Buffalo Bill posthumously

The "Legend Buffalo Bill" are dedicated nowadays among other things

Movies

Numerous films illuminate the life of one of the most dazzling characters in the Wild West . Since the 1970s, the perspective has also turned to the fate of the indigenous people - for example with the 1976 film Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson (German title: Buffalo Bill and the Indians ) produced by director Robert Altman .

The film documentary Lost Film Treasures from the TV channels Arte and INA shows and analyzes historical film documents by Buffalo Bill.

literature

  • William Frederick Cody: The Life of the Hon. William F. Cody. Known as Buffalo Bill the Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide. To Autobiography. Bliss, Hartford CT 1879 (Reprinted. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln NE 1978, ISBN 0-8032-6303-1 ), international.loc.gov .
  • Helen Cody Wetmore: Buffalo Bill the last scout. A portrait of Colonel William F. Cody's life. J. Engelhorn, Stuttgart 1902 (several editions).
  • Helen Cody: Buffalo Bill the last great scout in the Gutenberg-DE project
  • Peter Lindig, Cornelia Lindig: Who Assassinated Old Surehand? (= Karl May in Leipzig. Special issue, ZDB -ID 1141680-4 ). Freundeskreis Karl May, Leipzig 2000, (especially on the relationship between Cody and Karl May).
  • Wolfgang Seifert: Patty Frank. The circus, the Indians, the Karl May Museum. On the trail of an unusual life. Karl-May-Verlag, Bamberg et al. 1998, ISBN 3-7802-3003-8 (contains the German tour dates of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show ).
  • Harald Neckelmann: How Buffalo Bill swung his lasso in Berlin. History in stories - curiosities from the capital city's vita. Berlin Story-Verlag, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-86368-105-0 .
  • Éric Vuillard : Sadness of the Earth. A story by Buffalo Bill Cody , in German by Nicola Denis. Matthes & Seitz, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-95757-362-9 .

Web links

Commons : Buffalo Bill  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d William “Buffalo Bill” Cody . 1907. Retrieved June 2, 2013.
  2. ↑ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1989/07/09/buffalo-bill-regains-medal-of-honor/50945d99-4c41-4a7c-9cc5-778d4cd44c4b/
  3. ↑ nytimes.com
  4. ↑ historybyzim.com
  5. ↑ culturalaffairs.org
  6. ↑ a b c article "As if cast from ore, he sits on the horse" by Ann Claire Richter on January 5th, 2008 on braunschweiger-zeitung.de.
  7. ↑ Richard Smirke, Maxime Robin r: Le Bataclan Manager on Paris Tragedy: 'We Will Not Surrender'. In: Billboard (magazine) . November 18, 2015, accessed October 7, 2018 .
  8. ↑ buffalobill.org
  9. ↑ Note: The shown carnival order is unfortunately not dated, but is evidenced by contemporary photos of council members of the Trier carnival society Heuschreck who wear the order.
  10. ↑ [1]
  11. ↑ Famous Freemasons Buffalo Bill , Homepage: Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon (accessed December 14, 2012)
  12. ↑ Famous Freemasons USNews , Homepage: US News & World Report (accessed December 14, 2012)
  13. ↑ Inscription on Buffalo Bill's grave
  14. ↑ 100th anniversary of death: Buffalo Bill - the man who shot down 4280 buffalo In: 20 minutes from January 8, 2017 (with film recordings)
  15. ↑ John Lloyd , John Mitchinson: The Book of General Ignorance. Faber & Faber, London 2006, ISBN 0-571-23368-6 .
  16. ↑ From: Buffalo Bill in the Wild West. Arte-Geie Documentation, France Television, Equidia, Ere Production-2012.
  17. ↑ https://www.spiegel.de/geschichte/buffalo-bill-der-mann-der-den-wilden-westen-erfand-a-1129208.html
  18. ^ Film review of Buffalo Bill and the Indians: In: digitalvd.de online magazine. Archived from the original on July 21, 2010 ; Retrieved February 27, 2009 .
personal data
SURNAME Buffalo Bill
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cody, William Frederick (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American bison hunter and one of the founders of modern show business
DATE OF BIRTH February 26, 1846
PLACE OF BIRTH at Le Claire , Scott County , Iowa Territory
DATE OF DEATH January 10, 1917
Place of death Denver , Colorado