Wild West in New York
"The wigwam village, the Indian war-dance, the chant of the Great Spirit as it was sung on the Plains.... It was my effort, in depicting the West, to depict it as it was."
-- Buffalo Bill Cody
In 1885, Annie Oakley and Frank Butler joined Buffalo Bill Cody's traveling Wild West show. Cody had started his popular entertainment in 1883, hiring real Indians and cowboys for elaborate productions that evoked the untamed -- and mostly disappeared -- American frontier.
Cody's Wild West show always drew crowds in New York City, conjuring the myth of the west for an eager Eastern audience. Through the last half of the nineteenth century, white settlers had been steadily displacing Native Americans, destroying a centuries-old way of life. The building of the Transcontinental Railroad accelerated the process. Deadly conflicts erupted between American forces and Native American tribes -- the so-called "Indian wars" -- and U.S. government policies confined Native Americans to reservations. The Wild West show offered a nostalgic look at a disappearing world.
Read descriptions from New York newspapers and take a virtual trip to Buffalo Bill's Wild West.
page created on 2.14.06
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