Louis S. Warren (112 page)

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Authors: Buffalo Bill's America: William Cody,the Wild West Show

Tags: #State & Local, #Buffalo Bill, #Entertainers, #West (AK; CA; CO; HI; ID; MT; NV; UT; WY), #Frontier and Pioneer Life - West (U.S.), #Biography, #Adventurers & Explorers, #Entertainment & Performing Arts, #Fiction, #United States, #General, #Pioneers - West (U.S.), #Historical, #Frontier and Pioneer Life, #Biography & Autobiography, #Pioneers, #West (U.S.), #Civil War Period (1850-1877), #Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, #Entertainers - United States, #History

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9. “The Ladies Expedition,” unattributed clipping, n.d.; also “Brussels Gossip—From Wounded Knee to Waterloo” unattributed clipping, n.d. in G. C. Crager Scrapbook, 1891–92, BBHC.

10. The scholarship on world's fairs and exhibitions is huge. A good summary of it may be found in Robert W. Rydell, John E. Findling, and Kimberly D. Pelle, Fair America:
World's Fairs in the United States
(Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000), esp. 1–13. Other sources consulted here include Robert W. Rydell, All the World's a Fair:
Visions of Empire at American International Expositions,
1876–1916
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), and
World of Fairs: The Century of Progress Expositions
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993); Burton Benedict,
The Anthropology of World's Fairs
(Berkeley, CA: Scolar Press, 1983); Karal Ann Marling,
Blue Ribbon: A Social and Pictorial
History of the Minnesota State Fair
(St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1990). For the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, see also Erik Larson,
The Devil in the White City:
Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America
(New York: Crown, 2003); and Neil Harris, Wim de Wit, James Gilbert, and Robert W. Rydell, Grand Illusions:
Chicago's World's Fair of
1893
(Chicago: Chicago Historical Society, 1993).

11. Larson,
Devil in the White City,
117; Harris et al.,
Grand Illusions,
81–84.

12. Stanley Applebaum,
The Chicago World's Fair
of 1893
(New York: Dover, 1980), 103; Larson,
Devil in the White City,
250.

13. See Slotkin,
Gunfighter Nation,
80–82; White, “Frederick Jackson Turner and Buffalo Bill,” 7–65; Fabian, “History for the Masses,” 223–39, esp. 223–26.

14. Larson, Devil in the White City, 236; gondolas in Harris et. al., Grand Illusions, 65; J. W. Buel,
The Magic City: A Massive Portfolio of the Original Photographic View of the World's
Fair
(St. Louis, MO: Historical Publishing Co., 1894), n.p.

15. Swimming races and “Ball of the Midway Freaks” in Larson,
Devil in the White City,
311–15; prune rider in Claire Perry,
Pacific Arcadia: Images of California,
1600–1915
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 94–95.

16. Amy Leslie [Lilian West Brown Buck], Amy Leslie at the Fair (Chicago: W. B. Conkey, 1893), 20.

17. “The Last of the Wild West,”
New York Times,
Feb. 23, 1887, p. 2.

18. Burrows and Wallace,
Gotham,
1228–29.

19. Kasson,
Amusing the Million,
34.

20. Nate Salsbury, “Contract with Bailey,” typescript, n.d., Box 1/63, YCAL MSS 17, NSP.

21. Jacobson,
Barbarian Virtues,
14.

22. “Cossack and Cowboy,” unattributed clipping, July 29, 1888, WFC Scrapbook 1883–1886–1888, BBHC.

23. Remington, “Buffalo Bill in London,” 96–98; for an example of the comparison, see Leslie,
Amy Leslie at the Fair,
24–25.

24. Burke,
Buffalo Bill from Prairie to Palace,
250–51.

25. BBWW 1893 program, 27–28.

26. Quote from Blackstone,
Buckskin, Bullets, and Business,
82; Thomas M. Barrett, “Cowboys or Indians? Cossacks and the Internationalization of the American Frontier,”
Journalof the West
42: 1 (Winter 2003): 52–59; Makharadze and Chkhaidze,
Wild West
Georgians
.

27. Burke,
Buffalo Bill from Prairie to Palace,
50, 55. For horse purchases, see WFC to Frank Hammitt, Dec. 21, 1892, and WFC to Frank Hammitt, Dec. 21, 1894, MS 6, Series I:B, Box 1, BBHC.

28. In 1895, western author Owen Wister published his “Evolution of the Cow-Puncher,” which argued the cowboy was the advance guard of Anglo-Saxon expansion. Owen Wister, “The Evolution of the Cow-Puncher,”
Harper's New Monthly Magazine,
1895, in Vorpahl,
My Dear Wister,
77–96. Quote from p. 80.

29. Nasaw,
Going Out,
1–46.

30. Harold Coffin Syrett,
The City of Brooklyn,
1865–1898:
A Political History
(1944; rprt. New York: Ams Press, 1968), 235–36; there were 89,722 Irish in Kings County (Brooklyn) in 1890, according to “The Historical Census,” online database at . Nov. 1, 2004.

31. Vaudeville theaters charged a dime for admission, and drew immigrant crowds. The cheapest theaters, the so-called “ten-twenty-thirties,” charged ten cents for their upper balcony seats and thirty cents for the best seats in the house. These were popular destinations for laborers and low-level clerks, too. Nasaw,
Going Out,
40–42.

32. For Germans, see M. B. Bailey,
Original Souvenir,
151; “George Hamid,”
Philadelphia
Bulletin,
June 14, 1971, clipping in MS 6, WFC Collection Series VI:B BBWW Personnel Box 1/6, BBHC.

33. Shanton from “How Shantor [
sic
] Rode the Bear,”
Chicago Herald,
July 10, 1894, and “The Laramie Kid's Career,”
New York Press,
July 8, 1894; McPhee from “Cody's Bold Cowboys,”
New York Advertiser,
May 20, 1894, all in NSS, vol. 4, 1894, WH 72, DPL-WHR; these names are drawn from George H. Gooch, ed.,
Route-Book Buffalo Bill's Wild
West
1899
(Buffalo, NY: Matthews Northrup, 1899), 3–4.

34. “Our Unique Idea,”
Morning Journal,
May 20, 1894, in NSS, vol. 4, 1894, WH 72, DPL-WHR.

35. Clipping from
Deutsche Eindrucke,
Aug. 20, 1896, in NSS, 1896, DPL, translation by Warren Dym.

36. Wetmore,
Last of the Great Scouts,
ix–x. Deloria,
Playing Indian,
39–41, 46–47; Fintan O'Toole, The Lie of the Land: Irish Identities (New York: Verso, 1997), 26–28; for jokes, see “Lebkuecher's Levee,”
New Jersey Times,
June 23, 1891, clipping in Crager Scrapbook, BBHC; for Tammany members at Wild West show, see “Wild West Open,”
Brooklyn Citizen,
May 5, 1894, clipping in NSS, vol. 4, 1894, WH 72, DPL-WHR. For Croker's career with Tammany Hall, see Burrows and Wallace,
Gotham,
1104–10.

37. Nate Salsbury, “At Police Headquarters” typescript, n.d., in YCAL MSS 17, Box 2/63, NSP.

38. “The Historical Census,” Nov. 1, 2004.

39. E. J. Hobsbawm,
The Age of Empire:
1875–1914,
(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987), 180. Census figures on American-born children of immigrants are as follows: according to the 1890 census, native-born males of foreign parents in Kings County, New York, numbered 157,204; native-born females numbered 164,653. “The Historical Census,” Nov. 1, 2004; Nasaw,
Going Out,
43–44.

40. Syrett,
City of Brooklyn,
129, 220.

41. Ellen M. Snyder-Grenier,
Brooklyn! An Illustrated History
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996), 35. For Forefather's Day, see “City and Suburban News,”
New York
Times,
Dec. 19, 1886, p. 7. Other historical associations were no more inclusive. The Brooklyn Historical Society began as the Long Island Historical Society in 1863, with quarters in the exclusive Brooklyn Heights neighborhood which was home to most of Brooklyn's New England descendants. Snyder-Grenier,
Brooklyn!,
36.

42. Nasaw,
Going Out,
44–45.

43. Nasaw,
Going Out,
52–53.

44. “Old-Time Actors with the Indians,”
New York Telegram,
June 21, 1894, in NSS, vol. 4, 1894, WH 72, DPL-WHR; Keen's “Dutchman” act is mentioned in various places. See “Rubbart at the ‘Wild West,' ”
The Bailie
(Glasgow), Nov. 25, 1891, p. 7.

45. BBWW 1893 program; BBWW 1894 program; Wojtowicz,
Buffalo Bill Collector's Guide,
24–25.

46. BBWW 1894 program; Wojtowicz,
Buffalo Bill Collector's Guide,
25.

47. Roosevelt,
Winning of the West,
1: 4.

48. Turner, “Significance of the Frontier in American History”; Klein,
Frontiers of Historical
Imagination,
13–31; Cronon, “Revisiting the Vanishing Frontier,” 157–76.

49. Herbert Baxter Adams,
Saxon Tithing-Men in America
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1882), and
The Germanic Origin of New England Towns
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1882).

50. Quoted in William Cronon, “Turner's First Stand: The Significance of Significance in American History,” in
Writing Western History: Essays on Major Western Historians,
ed. Richard W. Etulain (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1991), 77.

51. For American history departments, Lawrence Levine, “Clio, Canons, and Culture,”
Journal of American History
80, no. 3 (Dec. 1993): 849–67, esp. 855–56; for show business, Nasaw,
Going Out,
43, n.

52. Gooch, ed.,
Route-Book Buffalo Bill's Wild West
1899,
21; George H. Gooch, ed.,
Route-BookBuffalo Bill's Wild West
1900
(Kansas City, MO: Hudson-Kimberley Publishing, 1900), 42, in BBHC.

53. Fellows and Freeman,
This Way to the Big Show,
119–20.

54. NSP, YCAL MSS 17, Box 1, Folder 21, Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT; for African Americans in the actual West see Quintard Taylor,
In Search of the Racial
Frontier,
17–221.

55. Quoted in Yost,
Buffalo Bill,
263–64.

56. WFC to George T. Beck, March 26, 1895, in WFC Letters, No. 9972, Box 1/1, AHC. Census figures from “Historical Census,” March 7, 2005.

57. “These People Making History,”
Brooklyn Daily Times,
April 12, 1897, in NSS, 1897, DPL-WHR. See also Nate Salsbury to WFC, Oct. 10, 1899, in YCAL MSS 17, Box 1/11, NSP. Nina Silber writes that
Black America
attracted 200,000 people in Brooklyn, and that it showed in London by the end of 1895. Nina Silber,
The Romance of Reunion:
Northerners and the South,
1865–1900
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), 135.

58. I owe this idea of place to William Cronon.

59. “Indians See ‘The World,' ”
The World,
June 4, 1894; “New for the Boulevardiers,”
New
York Herald,
June 1, 1894; “Invaded by Riffian Moors,”
Brooklyn Eagle,
n.d.: “Eleven Texans with Guns,”
New York Sun,
May 9, 1894. All in NSS, 1894, Microfilm 18, Reel 1, DPL.

60. See tickets to Chicago show and Ambrose Park show, in YCAL MSS 17, Box 1, Folder 23, NSP.

61. “Buffalo Bill ‘At Home' to Friends,”
New York Herald,
May 10, 1894, NSS, 1894, p. 30, Series 7, Box 4, DPL.

62. “Buffalo Bill's Wild West Expanded,”
New York Telegram,
May 5, 1894, p. 28; and “Buffalo Bill in Brooklyn,”
New York Mercury and America,
May 6, 1894, p. 27, of NSS, 1894, WH 72, Series 7, Box 4, DPL.

63. Remington, “Buffalo Bill in London,” 98.

64. Jacob A. Riis,
How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York,
ed. David Leviatin (1893; rprt. New York: St. Martin's, 1996), 60; also David Leviatin, “Introduction,” in Riis,
How the Other Half Lives,
28.

65. Leviatin, “Introduction,” 48, n. 78.

66. Riis,
How the Other Half Lives,
73.

67. “City Camp Life,”
Brooklyn Citizen,
May 20, 1894, clipping in NSS, vol. 4, Series 7, Box 4, DPL.

68. Untitled clipping,
American Hebrew,
Aug. 24, 1894, NSS.

69. “Buffalo Bill's Wild West,”
Recorder,
May 10, 1894, in NSS, 1894, p. 29, WH 72, Series 7, Box 4, DPL. BBWW 1910 program (New York: Southern & Co. Publishers), n.p.

70. Riis,
How the Other Half Lives,
179.

71. For parks movement, see Jon C. Teaford, The Unheralded Triumph: City Government in
America,
1870–1900
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), 252–58. Quotation from “An Army from All Nations,”
New York Tribune,
May 10, 1894, NSS, vol. 4, Series 7, Box 4, DPL.

72. Remington, “Buffalo Bill in London,” 98.

73. “City Camp Life,”
Brooklyn Citizen,
May 20, 1894. At least one columnist wrote in 1897 that the show was “Stirring Up Savage Passions in the Rising Generation,” a remark that suggested the show's usefulness for inoculating boys against neurasthenia. “The Wild West Show,” unattributed clipping, April 14, [no year], NSS, vol. 7, 1897, Series 7, Box 7, DPL.

74. Although not entirely positive. Boys who committed acts of serious violence while playing “Buffalo Bill's Wild West” also appeared in the press. “Played Wild West,”
New York
Commercial Advertiser,
Aug. 29, 1894, NSS, vol. 4, Series 7, Box 4, DPL.

75. “New Wild West Show,”
New York Recorder,
Aug. 23, 1894, NSS, vol. 4, 1894, Series 7, Box 4, DPL.

76. Deloria,
Playing Indian.

77. M. B. Bailey,
Official Souvenir,
274; Blackstone,
Buckskins, Bullets, and Business,
42–43.

78. See, for example, “Buffalo Bill at Portsmouth,” unattributed clipping, n.d., G. C. Crager Scrapbook, BBHC.

79. Both men claimed the vaccinations were absolutely “not necessary.” “Virus for Heap Big Injun,”
Evening World
(New York), May 16, 1894, NSS, 1894, Series 7, Box 4, DPL. For the history of urban public health campaigns and the response of immigrant communities, see Charles Rosenberg,
The Cholera Years: The United States in
1832, 1849,
and
1866,
rev. ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), esp. 33–34.

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