Buffalo Bill in Cedar Falls IA | 1917 Double Bill

William F. Cody shaking hands

Above Looped film footage of William F. Cody, aka Buffalo Bill, possibly filmed by the Edison Company, which recorded a series of brief films pertaining to Cody's Wild West performances. We have no explanation for the vigor of his handshake.

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My father was born in northeastern Iowa in 1901. Buffalo Bill was still touring the country in those years, appearing with his traveling show. He performed in Cresco and Decorah, one time each, which may account for my father's memory of having actually attended a Wild West performance. Cody died in January 1917, two months before the following news article appeared in an Iowa newspaper—

Anon, BILL CODY'S DOUBLE: Col. Curt L. Alexander, of Nebraska, Startles Cedar Falls Lads in the Marshalltown Times-Republican (Marshalltown IA), March 6, 1917—

"Gee! Buffalo Bill ain't dead! Look, fellers!"

That's the way a small boy directed a bunch of his fellows to Col. Curt L. Alexander, of Hastings, Neb., walking the streets of Cedar Falls (IA) today. And a small army of boys greeted him every time he appeared.

Colonel Alexander is an exact "double" of the late Col. W.F. Cody, from his flowing hair, moustache, goatee and big sombrero to the tips of his cowboy boots. He is here visiting his nephew, Lloyd Alexander,  a prominent clothing merchant, while en route home from Chicago.

Besides looking enough like the famous "Buffalo Bill" to have been his twin brother, Colonel Alexander is an old plainsman and scout and as much like Colonel Cody in his habits. In fact, he was a lifelong intimate friend of "Buffalo Bill," working with him as a freighter across the plains when the west was young and in later years traveling for weeks at a time with Colonel Cody's great wild west show, where his remarkable likeness to his friend caused many amusing situations to arise.

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Since first posting the above news excerpt, we have also found an article by David Whitsett, titled A CEDAR FALLS STOP: Four US Presidents, MLK Among Famous Visitors to Town, in the Cedar Falls Times (May 1, 2013), which is online here. It tells the story of the one occasion in which Buffalo Bill performed with the Wild West in Cedar Falls on August 31, 1912. Here is the excerpt pertaining to that—

[Cedar Falls resident] Stella Wynegar recalled that his [Cody's] crew set up their tents in “Mullarkey’s pasture,” which was on the northwest corner of Cedar Falls. She says that she and her son, Claude, did not attend the show but that they “were wandering around the grounds after his show, and Buffalo Bill came up and talked with us. He asked about our family and told us about his life and where he’d been. He was very interesting and very nice.”

Another Cedar Falls resident, Marie Cook, also recalled Buffalo Bill’s visit. She remembered that she and her family were living on West First Street near where his show was set up, “He came walking along and saw the chickens in our yard. He offered my grandma $1.50 to cook a chicken dinner for his troupe and she did it!” 

Both Marie and Stella also remembered that Annie Oakley was one of the stars of the Wild West Show when it was here. She was, perhaps, America’s first female superstar. She was a true sharp shooter who could split a playing card edge-on with her .22 rifle and put several holes in it before it hit the ground.

NOTE: There is a Wynegar Oral History Collection (Manuscript Record Series MsC-18) in the Special Collections and University Archives holdings at the Rod Library, University of Northern Iowa.

Buffalo Bill Cody in Cedar Falls IA in 1912

Greetings from Buffalo Bill

In an earlier post on William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody, we shared the story of his only visit to Cedar Falls IA, in 1912, as recalled by Stella Robinson Wynegar. Below is a different account by her son.

Claud R. Wynegar, The Century and I: Memories of Cedar Falls and Beyond. Pacific Palisades CA: Seamount Publications, 1999, p. 51—

I do not remember the year [it was 1912], but I was a small boy when the Buffalo Bill and Pawnee Bill Circus came to town. They put up their tents out West First Street in Mularkey's pasture [sic, Mullarky's pasture, now called Riverview Park, at Ellen Street and South Park Road]. It was in the summer. I was alone and I got to the grounds early. I had a seat in the open air tent to watch the "battles" between the white men and the Indians, and a lot of fancy riding and roping of horses.

Buffalo Bill was on a horse with a shotgun. Someone ahead of him would throw a glass ball into the air and he would shoot at it and break it into small pieces. There was number of tents. I looked into all of them. It was a show a bit difficult to describe. There were a few wild bison, quite a few cowboys, Indians in native costumes, a few concessions where souvenirs were sold and food stands. It was the first circus I ever saw.

Later in the afternoon my mother drove out in our buggy to get me. While looking for me she met Buffalo Bill and had a nice visit with him. No doubt that was the beginning of my interest in the American West, and it has always stayed with me. I own some Remington bronzes, some western pictures and books about the people who were part of that era.
 

Buffalo Bill: Never Missed and He Never Will

Montage © Roy R. Behrens 2017

Above Title slide for Iowa's Buffalo Bill: Never Missed and He Never Will, a presentation sponsored by Humanities Iowa. For information on how to schedule this event for Iowa libraries, community centers and other public-accessible venues, as well as how to fund it through an HI grant (surprisingly easy), go to the Humanities Iowa website.

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William F. Cody (1846-1917), better known as “Buffalo Bill,” was born near Le Claire, Iowa, in Scott County, just north of Davenport. By the end of his life, he had become what some have called “the most famous American in the world.” 

He had been a Pony Express rider, an Army scout, a buffalo hunter for the railroad, and the founder and central attraction of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, which traveled throughout the US and in Europe for thirty years. This talk is an overview of Cody’s life, both tragic and heroic. It was tragic because of the role he played in the near extinction of the American Bison (he himself is said to have killed nearly 3000 buffalo in eight months), and, more deplorable, in the subjugation of Native Americans. 

If his life was heroic, it was because of his later support of the rights of Native Americans, his friendship with many of them (most notably with Sitting Bull), and his link with such colorful characters as Annie Oakley and Wild Bill Hickok. As a Wild West performer, it is thought that Cody probably played to a collective audience of more than 50 million, including at various Iowa towns. This is a face-paced and entertaining 60-minute talk, illustrated by projected vintage photographs, film clips and animated graphics.

Humanities Iowa | Program opportunities 2019

WPA mural by Orr Fisher

Since the mid-1990s, I've been associated with the Humanities Iowa Speakers Bureau. For all those years, I've been available to speak on subjects that pertain (in one way or another) to the history of the state. I've often given talks (sometimes as many as ten per year) at public libraries, historical societies, community centers, and so on. The talks are free and open to the public. They are funded by Humanities Iowa, which is part of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The requesting organization is charged only $50, while the HI picks up the additional costs of travel expenses, speaker's honorarium, and so on. What a great program.

Over the years, the talks I've offered have usually been about Frank Lloyd Wright, Grant Wood, Buffalo Bill, World War I camouflage (which Iowans contributed to), and so on. A few days ago, I gave my presentation on Buffalo Bill (which includes an account of the plight of the Native Americans during the dreadful Indian Wars) at the Story County Conservation Center, just north of Ames IA. The large audience (around 100 people) was absolutely wonderful, and, as usual, I had a truly delightful time.

The downside is that it was probably the last time I'll present my talk about Buffalo Bill, which has easily had the most requests. With my retirement from teaching, I decided it was time to offer new topics. My new talks are listed on the HI website here. One of those talks is about the WPA (Works Progress Administration), one of the government programs set up by Franklin D. Roosevelt in the Depression Era, as I described in an essay I wrote years ago. One facet of that enabled unemployed artists to apply to create public murals for permanent installation in US post offices. It's surprising how many of these have survived. Reproduced above is one of my favorites, titled The Corn Parade, a painting by Orr Fisher in the US Post Office in Mount Ayr IA.

Wild West, Hot Dogs and Gertrude Kasebier

Gertrude Kasebier, Portrait of Charging Thunder (1898)

Above A studio portrait of a Native American (Lakota) named Charging Thunder, as photographed by Gertrude Kasebier (1852-1934) at her Fifth Avenue Studio in New York.

Kasebier had studied with Arthur Wesley Dow (whose theory of composition also influenced Georgia O'Keeffe), and was associated with O'Keeffe's partner Alfred Stieglitz and the Photo-Secession. After attending the Wild West show in Brooklyn, she secured permission from Buffalo Bill to photograph a group of the Wild West show Indians in her studio.

The photography session took place on Sunday, April 24, 1898. It lasted for three hours, during which the guests were served with tea and hot dogs ("hot frankfurters between unbuttered bread"). It isn't certain, but apparently one of Kasebier's guests was Charging Thunder (shown in the Kasebier portrait above). Details about the session and a selection of the portraits can be found in Michelle Delaney, Buffalo Bill's Wild West Warriors: A Photographic History by Gertrude Kasebier (New York: Harper Collins, 2007).

There seems some confusion about whether there might have been two performers named Charging Thunder. The person in this photograph appears in another photograph (also taken by Kasebier) with his Native American wife. However, elsewhere online, we have found a story (with photos) of another Lakota Indian named Charging Thunder (they certainly don't look like the same person), who was part of the Wild West troupe when they performed in Salford, England, in 1903. This second Charging Thunder, who was 26 years old at the time, had fallen in love with one of the show's horse trainers, a woman named Josephine, and when the Wild West left town, the two of them remained in the UK, married and raised a family. For the rest of their lives, they lived in the vicinity of Manchester. Charging Thunder changed his name to George Edward Williams, registered as an immigrant, and worked for many years at the Belle Vue Zoological Gardens, where he took care of the elephants. According to BBC Manchester, two of his grandchildren have recently been located in the UK.

It's nice to see the Kasebier photo of the first Charging Thunder with his dog. Back then, it was commonly rumored that some of the Native Americans considered dog meat a delicacy. Here for example is a paragraph from the New York Times (Thursday, June 28, 1888, p. 2)—

WHERE DOGS ARE DISAPPEARING: The refining influence of civilization has not lessened the strong taste that Buffalo Bill's Wild West Indians have for dog flesh, and the canine population of Staten Island is rapidly diminishing. New Shirt yesterday devoured with apparent relish an expensive poodle that had been used to much better treatment than it received at the hands of the fighting warrior. The show is still drawing large crowds.

Jack Kerouac Meets Buffalo Bill

Edward Zane Carroll Judson, better known by his pseudonym Ned Buntline, was a 19th-century author of dime novels. It is he who is usually credited with establishing the legend of William F. Cody as Buffalo Bill. Buntline could write as many as six dime novels in a week. His writing method, as it turns out, seems to have anticipated that of Beat Generation novelist Jack Kerouac (a method called spontaneous prose, about which Truman Capote once said, "That's not writing, it's typing"), who is said to have typed his novel On the Road on one long role of paper, with no revisions. Here's how Buntline described his way of working, as quoted in Robert A. Carter, Buffalo Bill Cody: The Man Behind the Legend (Edison NJ: Castle Books, 2000), p. 139—

I take a bound book of blank paper, set my title at the head of it, and begin to write about the fictitious character who is to be the hero of it. I push ahead as fast as I can write, never blotting out anything I have once written, and never making a correction or modification. If you will examine the leaves of my manuscript you will see that the pages are clean with no erasures—no interlineations. If a book does not suit me when I have finished it, or at any stage of its progress, I simply throw it in the fire and begin again, without any reference to the discarded text.

The Iowa Exploits of Buffalo Bill Cody

Iowa-born Wild West showman William Frederick Cody, famously known as Buffalo Bill, was fortunate not to have witnessed the final years of the Great War. He died on January 10, 1917, in Denver, Colorado, at age 70. His funeral was a major news event, as admirers worldwide mourned his passing. Ironically, despite the on-going conflict, condolences for his death were sent by both England’s King George V and Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II.

Cody’s death was undoubtedly fresh in American minds on March 6, 1917, less than two months after the funeral. On that day, according to an article in the Marshalltown (Iowa) Times-Republican, a group of Iowa youngsters, who were walking down the street in Cedar Falls…more>>>

Iowa's Buffalo Bill

Iowa's Buffalo Bill Is the Man in the Moon

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Vincent Starrett (Chicago Tribune book columnist Charles Vincent Emerson Starrett), Born in a Bookshop: Chapters from the Chicago Renascence. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965, p. 154—

My only other clear memory of Washington days is a visit to Keith's Theater, where I heard and met the famous old minstrel James Thornton and his wife Bonnie. The rest of the bill was a bust as far as I was concerned, but the opportunity to meet the man who had written "When You Were Sweet Sixteen"—to say nothing of "My Sweetheart's the Man in the Moon" and "The Irish Jubilee"—was too good to miss…But I was sorry to have missed an encounter, a few weeks earlier, between Jimmy and Colonel William F. Cody. The theater manager told me about it with great glee. Cody also had been eager to meet an old favorite, and Jimmy had been brought around to his box. The manager made the introductions. "Jimmy," he said, "I want you to meet the famous Buffalo Bill, who is an admirer of yours." "Glad to know you, Mr. Bill," said Jimmy, shaking hands solemnly. "What part of Buffalo do you come from?"

The secret handshake?

Buffalo Bill's riotous night in Prairie du Chien

To be truthful, not all the midwestern engagements of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West were free of controversy. The most egregious example occurred in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, on the night of August 20, 1900.…

The full story is told in a new book by Roy R. Behrens, titled DREAMS OF FIELDS: Memory Traces of Iowa’s Past (Ice Cube Press 2025).  

how do you like your blue-eyed bird, mr. death?

Roy R. Behrens, © digital montage

Above One of my early digital montages (its title and date I can't recall). At the time I was interested in Arts and Crafts designer William Morris (that's Jane Morris leaning leftward), and Buffalo Bill (behind and above the target). One day we discovered that a bird (a starling) had been trapped in our wood stove, where it died and remained somewhat preserved. The feather colors were astonishing, and I decided I should place its body on a flat bed scanner, then use the result in a montage. Perhaps I also had in mind that wonderful e.e. cummings poem about the demise of Buffalo Bill: "How do you like your blue-eyed boy, Mister Death."

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Wilhelm Reich, Passion of Youth: An Autobiography. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988, p. 10—

Once I was playing by the fence and a peasant boy my age [whom he was forbidden to play with] was watching me from a few meters away. Suddenly he grabbed a stone, I presume as a joke, and threw it at me. It hit my forehead and I bled a little. He certainly had not intended to be mean. My mother washed my forehead and told my father [who was the boss of the other boy's father] what had happened. Father became enraged. He summoned the child and the child's father. After referring briefly to the incident, he gave the father a dreadful beating. The peasant endured it quietly, without defending himself. As he walked off with his child, I could see him beating him the whole way home. The boy screamed frightfully. I was very upset, but said nothing and crept away to hide. I was about eight years old.

Behrens, Dreams of Fields (2025)

Buffalo Bill look-alike becomes an airborne hero

Wherever I’ve lived, I think I’ve always been interested in what has happened in the past in that state, region or location. South, East, West, Midwest. Wherever. I am often amazed by the things that I’ve found. This month I’ve published a new essay about an Iowa-born performer who partly made his living from pretending to be another Iowa-born showman, the illustrious William F. Cody or Buffalo Bill. 

The wannabe impersonator, who ended up adopting the name of Colonel Samuel Franklin Cody, eventually moved to Europe, where he became the British equivalent of the Wright Brothers—that is, he invented some of the first powered aircraft, and piloted what is considered to be the first airplane flight in England. You can find the entire story in the February 2025 issue of The Iowa Source (Fairfield IA), but it’s also online here.

Ice cream, drinks and the half and half Iowa man

Above An advertising postcard featuring a tavern owner from Bonair IA named John Pecinovsky (1899-1942). After opening his tavern in the late 1930s, he attracted wide attention, was sought after by tourists, and was featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not, when he began to wear an outfit that was dark-colored on one half (bearded) and light on the other (clean-shaven). He was buried dressed the same way in nearby Cresco IA. See our earlier, related post.

Bonair has all but vanished now, but there is an American writer (she teaches writing in France) named Janet Hulstrand, whose relatives were from Bonair, who is in process of writing a memoir about her Midwestern origins called A Long Way from Iowa. See her post from 2014 titled A Little Town Called Bonair. I believe it was in Cresco (or was it Decorah?) that my father (who grew up near Ossian IA) saw Buffalo Bill and his Wild West extravaganza, c1912.

Buffalo Bill in Sioux City

Mailer designed by Connie Jones (2014)

Ping Pong and Indian Haircuts

Above Illustrations of Native American boys' haircuts, according to designated clan, from Francis La Flesche, "The Osage Tribe: Child Naming Rite" in 45th Annual Report, Bureau of American Ethnology (1925-26), Washington DC, 1928. Top row (left to right): Head and tail of elk; head, horns and tail of bison; tuft of hair on bison's back. Second row: Head, body and tail of small birds; head, wings and tail of eagle; turtle shell, with head, feet and tail. Third row: Reptile teeth;  a compass, showing four directional points; shaggy side of the wolf. Bottom row: Horns and tail of bison; head and tail of deer; and head, tail and immature horns of a young bison.

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Until recently, I had no idea that the Lakota Indians who performed in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show enjoyed playing ping pong. For more about this, check out the online photos of one of their games at the Denver Public Library's website. The spectators are other Wild West performers, including Mexican vaqueros, Russian Cossacks, US cavalrymen, cowboys, a Rough Rider, and other Native Americans. Seated in the center behind the table is a man in a suit who is holding up paper money, so presumably there was some gambling involved.

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In 1893, concurrent with the Columbian Exposition or the Chicago World's Fair (but not officially part of it), the Wild West played in Chicago from May through October. There is a detailed account of what happened during the show's single most profitable season in L.C. Moses, Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians 1883-1933 (Albuquerque NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1996). Here's an excerpt (p. 140)—

That season, Cody's Show Indians made good money, toured Chicago, took boat rides on Lake Michigan, ate peanuts and popcorn until they could eat no more, bought boutonnieres and funny coconut-fiber hats and wore them proudly, and on one occasion rode the merry-go-round [a carousel with wooden horses] by the hour. One evening in the high summer of Chicago's White City, fifteen Lakota led by Rocky Bear and No Neck mounted the painted ponies. As the carousel picked up speed, No Neck, holding the reins in both hands, gave a full-throated yell. Others in his party joined him. The News-Record placed the scene in its proper context. The Show Indians, observed the Record, "seem to like being jerked around on a carousel. They prefer it to the art galleries, and some people who are not Indians feel the same way." In all, about twenty-seven million people, a few hundred Indians among them, visited the fair. Most, Indians and non-Indians alike, probably had a glorious time.