As Editor, I must confess that I have used an age-old method of creating an eye-catching cover that has little to do with local history. Saying that, I admit a fascination for the dynamic, bigger than life performances of the Wild West Show. In such I have gathered dazzling photographs of western life for the OATS archive. The cover is my favourite.
I was fortunate to have contacted another fan of Buffalo Bill. He is John Mackie of the Vancouver Sun. Here’s a bit of his research from a couple of years ago.
Bill Cody had a real connection with Canada having spent many years growing up in Ontario. During his career he brought the Wild West Show to tour Canadian cities many times. The 1910 and 1914 tours were huge successes drawing 10’s of thousands of spectators. The 1914 show was part of “Sells Floto Circus” where he rode through as a guest without his entourage.
Wild West legend Buffalo Bill was 64 years old in 1910. After a lifetime as a scout, buffalo hunter and showman, he was ready to hang up his spurs, and announced he would do a two-year-long retirement tour.
On Sept. 12 and 13, 1910, he brought Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show to Vancouver. But it wasn’t just a Wild West show – he was touring in tandem with Pawnee Bill’s Great Far East show.
The hype for the “Historic and Real” exhibition was hilarious: the ad boasted it was “an Ethnological Mirror Reflecting the Tribal Traits, Customs and Costumes of Two Worlds.”
These included an “Oriental Spectacle displaying in authentic pageants the grandeurs of ancient Egypt,” “Football on Horseback,” and a re-enactment of the 1869 Battle of Summit Springs between the U.S. army and Cheyenne “Dog Soldiers.”
There were musical elephants, trained horses, American cowboys, American cowgirls, American Indians, German cuirassiers (cavalry), Bedouins, Russian Cossacks, South American gauchos, Mexican rurales, Japanese soldiers, Royal Irish Dragoons, Royal English Lancers, Scots, guides, and frontiersmen.
And tickets were only 50 cents, $1 extra for a reserved seat!
Buffalo Bill dispatched an advance man named Major Burke to stoke the fires ahead of the show.
“With black sombrero and long white moustache, Burke looks and is the typical plainsman until he begins to talk about the show,” the Vancouver World reported on Sept. 6.
“Then he proves to be the best advance man that has hit the coast and before the editors know it he has loaded them up with interesting stories for young and old that would have cost the average advertiser 10 cents a line. He has travelled from Texas to Timbuktu, and from Edmonton to Ecuador.”
Burke’s touch can be seen in the World’s description of the horses in the show.
According to Burke, Buffalo Bill had assembled “every style of horse, from the original untamed wild range animal, possessing the agility of a cat, the activity of a deer, ferocity of a tiger, the gyrating qualities intensified of the goat,” to “every grade of his domestic brother – the draught horse, the artillery mount, the cavalry steed, Indian pony, up to the highest honour-crowned thoroughbreds, from the scientific breeding studs.”
The hype worked. On Sept. 13 the World reported “all records for a ‘tented show’ were broken last night at Recreation Park, where the Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Pawnee Bill’s Far East show gave their second performance in this city.”
“The seating capacity of the big arena in which the exhibitions are given … is ordinarily 14,700. But the overflow amounted to 1,700 or more, swelling the total of attendance to 16,400. (Another) 3,000 to 4,000 persons were turned away.”
That would have been 15 per cent of Vancouver’s population, which was about 110,000 at the time.
The masses weren’t disappointed by the show.
“From start to finish the program is one round of surprise and delight,” the World reported.
“The almost uncanny discipline of the infantry, artillery and cavalry riders is a feature that will stand out long in the memory. For the lovers of horseflesh there was plenty to be amazed at, for no more brilliant a trained body of horses ever made their bow to Vancouver audiences.”
His beginnings happened when a writer named Ned Buntline spun some of Buffalo Bill’s stories into a novel, Buffalo Bill, King of the Bordermen, and his fame grew. He started appearing in touring shows in the 1870s and, in 1883, founded Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, which achieved international fame after travelling to Britain in 1887.
He joined forces with Pawnee Bill in 1908. A month before the Vancouver dates Pawnee Bill told the Winnipeg Tribune the show grossed almost $2 million in 1909.
Buffalo Bill didn’t really retire after his 1910-11-retirement tour, but he did cut back on performances. His last show was on Nov. 11, 1916, and he died on Jan. 10, 1917.
BUFFALO BILL CODY CANADIAN TOUR 1910
