William Frederick Cody

WILLIAM FREDERICK CODY

"BUFFALO BILL"

FEBRUARY 26, 1846 ~ JANUARY 10, 1917

William Frederick Cody was born at his family’s farmhouse in Scott County, Territory of Iowa on February 26, 1846. Following the death of his older brother, Samuel, the family relocated to Kansas in 1853. His family believed that Kansas should be a “free state” while many of the settlers in the area supported the practice of slavery. His father, while giving an anti-slavery speech, a mob against him formed, during the ensuing dispute, his father was stabbed. Young Cody, helped drag his father to safety although he never fully recovered from his wounds. Cody’s father died in 1857 from the complications of the stabbing.

At the age of 11, young Cody took a job with a freight wagon train as a “boy extra”, delivering messages to the wagon train from the wagon master. Within a few years of being on the plains, William Cody joined Johnston’s Army as a scout assigned to guide the Army to Utah to put down a falsely reported rebellion by the Mormon population of Salt Lake City. It was on this trip, that young Cody began his career as an “Indian Fighter” after shooting a Sioux warrior when a member of his party was killed by the Indian. At the age of 14 he signed on with the Pony Express to help build way stations and corrals, within a short time he was given the job as a Pony Express Rider.

Shortly after the death of his mother in 1863, Cody enlisted into the 7th Kansas Cavalry Regiment and fought with them on the Union side for the rest of the Civil War. Following the war, he was married to Louisa Frederici on March 6, 1866. Although the marriage was not a happy one, he unsuccessfully attempted to divorce his wife. They had four children, two of them dying at a young age.

In 1872, while serving as a civilian scout for the 3rd Cavalry Regiment, he was awarded the “Medal Of Honor” for “gallantry in action”. The nation’s highest medal for bravery was revoked by the U.S. Army on February 5, 1917 just 24 days after his death. At the time that the Medal of Honor was bestowed on him, he was a civilian and therefore ineligible for the award under new guidelines that were established in 1917 that the medal could only be granted to active duty military personnel. Seventy-two years later, in 1989, his file was reviewed by the Army and the Medal of Honor was restored to him.

During his work as an Army scout, scouting for Indians was part of his job while he was also responsible for hunting buffalo for meat for both the Cavalry and the Kansas Pacific Railroad. It was from this part of his life that he would earn his nickname, “Buffalo Bill”. With his reputation of his past and the changing of the west, he would eventually go into show business by forming a touring company called the Buffalo Bill Combination. The troupe would tour for ten years and his part typically included an 1876 incident at Warbonnet Creek where he claimed to have scalped a Cheyenne warrior, in revenge for the death of George Armstrong Custer at the Little Big Horn. Other members in his troupe included “Wild Bill Hickok” for one year, Annie Oakley, and Texas Jack Omohundro. On May 19, 1883 in North Platte, Nebraska he founded the “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West”, the name “show” was never in the title despite popular misconception. Taking members from his former company, he followed the business plan of the Barnum and Bailey Circus. For the next twenty years, he would tour the United States with his company, which included as many as 1,200 members. In 1887, he would take his show to London in celebration of the Jubilee year of Queen Victoria. He toured throughout Europe in 1889 and in 1890; he officially met Pope Leo XIII.

The profits from his company provide the funding for him to purchase a 4,000-acre ranch near North Platte, Nebraska in 1886. Scout’s Rest Ranch included an eighteen-room mansion. Buffalo Bill was always interested in the lands to the west of him, in Wyoming. In 1897 and 1899, Cody and his associates acquired the State of Wyoming the right to take water from the Shoshone River to irrigate about 169,000 acres of land in the Big Horn Basin. Prior to this, in 1895 he was instrumental in founding the city that would carry his name, Cody Wyoming. He built the Irma Hotel in downtown Cody, which is named after his daughter. He also had lodging on the North Fork of the Shoshone River, which is the route to the east entrance to Yellowstone National Park. On the South Fork of the Shoshone River, he would build his ranch, the TE Ranch. He then ordered that his cattle be moved from Nebraska and South Dakota to his new ranch in Wyoming. This new herd carried the brand TE. Buffalo Bill continued to purchase land as part of his TE Ranch to about 8,000 acres and ran about 1,000 head of cattle.

William F. Cody, “Buffalo Bill” died of kidney failure on January 10, 1917 in Denver, Colorado. He passed away one day following his baptism into the Roman Catholic Church. His funeral was held at the Elks Lodge in Denver, Colorado. His once great fortune had dwindled to under $100,000 at the time of his death. Despite his request to be buried in Cody, Wyoming in an early will, it was superseded by a later will, which left his burial up to his wife Louisa. His burial site was selected to be on Lookout Mountain, just a few miles west of Denver, at the base of the Rocky Mountains. In 1948, the Cody, Wyoming branch of the American Legion offered a reward for the “return” of his body to Wyoming. The Denver branch of the American Legion mounted a guard over the grave until a deeper shaft could be blasted into the rock to protect his remains. Despite the many years that he spent scouting for the Army during the Indian Wars, he was quoted as saying before a Congressional hearing, “Every Indian outbreak that I have ever known has resulted from broken promises and broken treaties by the government”. Today, a small sign on Interstate 70 at Exit 256 indicates a historical monument, the “Graveside of Buffalo Bill”.

Chief Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill ~ 1885

Buffalo Bill Cody ~ 1903