Buffalo Bill Cody is one of the iconic figures of the Old West but did you know his Wild West show often involved a cast of 1,500 people who had to be fed and transported from town to town? Or that Cody dined with presidents and royalty?
Those are just some of the things you learn in Steve Friesen's book, Galloping Gourmet: Eating and Drinking with Buffalo Bill.
Yes, Cody was an accomplished scout and hunter who lived in the era when the West was still relatively wild. Friesen describes Cody's Civil War experience as generally undistinguished but during the conflict, he did meet up with Wild Bill Hickok then serving as a Union spy.
After the war, Cody served as a scout and earned his name as a buffalo hunter at a time when herds were still abundant, Friesen points out.
The 1870s was the era of the dime novel and Western characters like Cody found fame with their rifles and buckskin. When Cody went east he was urged to to take the Buffalo Bill persona to the stage. One thing led to another, Friesen told Steve Tarter, and Cody got the show biz bug.
Those shows got bigger and bigger with Cody insisting on authenticity. "Even as the West he knew disappeared, he would live it on a daily basis," noted Friesen.
One of the main features of the book is exploring the fact that Cody liked to eat and eat well. While the author notes how much Buffalo Bill enjoyed New York's Delmonico's, Nashville's Maxwell House (before they started serving coffee there) or the DeWitt Hotel in Lewiston, Me., he didn't dine alone.
Cody and a team that included ace promoter Arizona John Burke made sure that the cast of Native Americans (primarily members of the Lakota nation), cowboys, and stagehands ate well when they were on the road.
It didn't matter if it was a one-night stand or a six-month stint such as the fabulously successful run in 1893 at Chicago's Columbian Exposition where Cody and his troops entertained 20,000 people twice a day every day for six months while crowds flooded to see White City.
"When people got off the train in Chicago, they could go left to the exposition or right to the Wild West show," said Friesen.
The Chicago engagement made a millionaire out of Cody who ran his Wild West shows all over the world for 30 years, said Friesen. Buffalo Bill not only had an impact on how we view the West in this country but in Europe where the Wild West show toured for years, he said.
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