Buffalo Bill's Cowboys Abroad
( ---._ ~ - ---· Buffalo Bill's Cowboys Abroad BY CLIFFORD P. WESTERMEIER Before Buffalo Bill's Wild West show appeared, the cowboy was both a hero and an antihero, depending upon the image created by the authors of dime novels and the writers of articles for newspapers and periodicals. The "hired man on horseback," either glorified or dishonored, was the victim of the pens of many individuals who were not qualified to judge his worth. Further more, three years following the launching of the Wild West show (1883), chroniclers of the cowboy began bidding him farewell. "The Decayed Cowboy," "On a Western Ranche," "Cattle Trails of the Prairies," "The Passing of the Cowboy," "A Fading Race," "The Passing of the Cow-Puncher," and "Goodbye to the American Cowboy" were predictive and presumptuous titles of articles pushing his bad-good and good-bad image from the scene. 1 Buffalo Bill may have "started the cowboy hero on his way," but the vast literature that surrounds William Frederick Cody certainly does not reveal any particular effort on his part to do more than enhance his own ego. 2 In fact, the Indian members of his traveling troupe fared far better, at least photographically. However, the ordinary spectator, the notables, and particularly the members of the press were fascinated and enthralled with the cowboy. This was the era of that supershowman "Buffalo Bill" as well as numerous others, among them James Butler Hickok-"Wild Bill," Gordon W. Lillie-"Pawnee Bill," and 1 Clifford P. Westermeier, Trailing the Cowboy (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers, 1955), pp. 383-90.
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