Buffalo Bill's Wild West Combined with Pawnee Bill's Great Far East

This colored poster print is a bust portrait of an American Indian woman, depicted on the image of a large arrowhead. She is identified as "’Arrowhead,’ Belle of the Tribe.”

Buffalo Bill's Wild West was one of the most successful American variety shows of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The touring production was created by William Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody (1846-1917), who promoted his ventures with the help of posters, billboards and other media innovations of the time. Cody was born in Le Claire, Iowa Territory, and lived in Canada before moving with his family to the Kansas Territory. His father was an outspoken opponent of slavery who died following a bloody attack by pro-slavery settlers when Cody was eleven years old. Forced to go to work to support his mother and siblings, he went on to become a buffalo hunter, guide and civilian scout and soon gained a reputation as a daring frontiersman and Indian fighter.

Nicknamed Buffalo Bill, Cody polished that reputation recounting campfire tales that mingled fact, exaggeration and outright fiction. His growing fame inspired a series of dime novels and helped launch Cody on a traveling stage career as the star of frontier melodramas. He had a natural gift for showmanship, a knack for homespun humor, and a western hero’s rugged good looks: he was often photographed holding a rifle and dressed in a buckskin suit with a wide brimmed hat and shoulder length hair. Hoping to expand his appeal to attract more middle-class family audiences, Cody launched his Buffalo Bill's Wild West in 1883. The outdoor variety show featured vignettes from frontier history, sharp shooting demonstrations, and riding stunts, with Buffalo Bill in a starring role as the expert marksman on horseback. He rounded out the cast with an ever widening and more diverse group of performers, including Lakota Sioux Indians, frontier cowboys, Mexican vacqueros, and Argentine gauchos. He added a female performer in 1885—sharpshooter Annie Oakley (born Phoebe Ann Mosey, 1860-1926)— who was so skilled with a gun that she could shoot a dime from between her husband’s thumb and forefinger. After the show expanded to become Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders in 1893, it also featured European cavalry, Cossacks and Arab horsemen.

The Wild West show toured throughout the United States and Europe. Its success was fueled by popular nostalgia for America’s fading frontier. But the show also flourished as America modernized, relying on train travel and new technologies like electric lighting to reach and entertain audiences. Cody inspired a host of imitators, whose productions were often referred to simply as Buffalo Bill shows.

By the early twentieth century, Buffalo Bill’s heroic image had been tarnished by a scandalous divorce trial, and his show faced growing competition from the fledgling film industry. In 1909 he merged with a former rival, Gordon William Lillie, to create Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Pawnee Bill’s Great Far East. The Great Far East Show was an ensemble group founded by Gordon William Lillie (1860-1942), nicknamed Pawnee Bill. Born in Illinois, Lillie had worked for the Pawnee Indian Agency and also served as a Pawnee interpreter for Buffalo Bill's Wild West. The combined production, sometimes called the “Two Bills Show,” featured traditional frontier acts with more exotic attractions like elephants, camels, and belly dancers. Mounting debt and a series of bad investments eventually forced Buffalo Bill to declare bankruptcy and shut down the show in 1915. When he died in 1917 in Denver, Colorado, his passing was noted by prominent figures ranging from European royalty to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. The town of Cody, Wyoming, which he helped found in 1896, is the site of a museum complex called the Buffalo Bill Center of the West.

This chromolithograph was produced by Strobridge Lithographing Company. The Strobridge firm was founded in Cincinnati, Ohio ca 1847 by lithographer Elijah J. Middleton (cited in some sources as Elijah C. Middleton). Middleton was known as one of the pioneers of chromolithography in the United States. By 1854 another lithographer, W. R. Wallace, along with the bookseller Hines Strobridge (1823-1909) had joined the firm as partners. After the Civil War, Strobridge acquired sole ownership of the company and renamed it after himself. Strobridge and Company became especially well known for circus, theater, and movie posters. After leaving the company, Elijah Middleton established a reputation as a portrait publisher, producing prints of George and Martha Washington, Daniel Webster, and other American historical figures.

Currently not on view