Staged…

The image above captures the mingling of the history and legend of the American West, a moment in time when onetime scouts, soldiers, cowboys, frontiersmen and Indians were acting out onstage and in the arena events from the lives they’d led. 

The creation of the mythical West started soon after the American Civil War. Among its leading pitchmen was Edward Zane Carroll Judson (aka Ned Buntline), publisher, journalist, writer, bigamist and serial liar. In 1869, while on a lecture tour on the virtues of temperance (speeches the heavy drinker was wholly unqualified to deliver), Buntline met U.S. Army scout William Frederick Cody. By then Cody had acquired the nickname “Buffalo Bill” for his horseback hunting prowess when culling meat for railroad crews. But Buntline took credit for Cody’s moniker and was to add greatly to the scout’s mythical status with florid dime novels. Before long Cody and friend and fellow former scout James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok were co-starring in Buntline-penned stage productions with John Baker “Texas Jack” Omohundro and the latter’s future wife Giuseppina Morlacchi, an Italian-born prima ballerina and popular dancer. Cody took to performing and in 1883 launched the globe-trotting Wild West show that would bring him fame as one of the world’s first international celebrities. 

In this circa 1889 portrait Cody (standing third from the left) poses with cast and crew members in front of the Deadwood Stage, the centerpiece of a regular act in the Wild West. The image is notable for capturing real Westerners alongside promoters and actors. Up top in the driver’s seat is bearded John Y. Nelson, a onetime trail guide who married into the Sioux tribe and, like Cody, was a former Army scout. Seated behind Nelson are two of his half-Sioux children. Wild West treasurer Jule Keen stands on the back of the coach, while press agent John Burke stands on the front. Standing below Burke, from left to right, are William “Bronco Bill” Irving and Buck Taylor, real-life cowboys Cody hired to show off their roping and riding skills. Irving, too, had married into the Sioux tribe, and the unidentified Sioux woman and boy to his right are likely his wife and their child. Rounding out the group are alternate driver Fred Matthews, at far left, and Cody’s foster son, Johnny Baker. The latter was billed as the “Cowboy Kid” and served as a young male counterpart to sharpshooter Annie Oakley. After Cody’s death in 1917 Baker (who married Wild West treasurer Keen’s daughter) founded the Buffalo Bill Museum, which remains in business on Colorado’s Lookout Mountain and overlooks the graves of Cody and wife Louisa. 

So, posing before a painted backdrop, we see a cast of Western characters, some of whom lived out the actual stories they depicted. In years to come, particularly with the advent of motion pictures, the gap between the real West and the “reel” West would only widen.