William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody experienced the western frontier in its heyday, then recreated its drama and romance on stage. Born in Iowa in 1846 and moved to Kansas Territory the year it was opened for settlement, Cody had already led a colorful life before he was out of his teens. At times a trapper, prospector and rider for the Pony Express, he also fought for the Union in the Civil War and excelled as a frontier Army scout during the Indian Wars. Cody earned his nickname while working as a buffalo hunter supplying meat to railroad construction crews (1867-1868). Edward Z. C. Judson, a writer using the pen name Ned Buntline, realized that Cody’s real life adventures were ideal for fictionalizing in dime novels. Judson made Cody the hero of his novel, then persuaded him to star in his play, The Scouts of the Prairie (1872). Cody remained on the stage thereafter — always playing himself — amid further stints as a hunter and Indian fighter. In 1883 Cody organized Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, an outdoor extravaganza that dramatized the myths and legends of the vanishing frontier. In addition to cowboys, Indians, horses, buffalo and longhorns, the troupe included at various times sharp shooter Annie Oakley and Chiefs Sitting Bull and Red Cloud. Buffalo Bill’s show toured throughout the world, where it was seen by more people in its 30 years than any other single entertainment.

Although the East was the main theater of the Civil War, there were battles in the West as well. In 1862, Union forces defeated Texas troops at La Glorietta Pass, New Mexico, forcing the Confederates to withdraw from the New Mexico Territory. But it was not the conflict between North and South that produced most of the bloodshed in the West during this time. It was the clash between Indians and whites. The withdrawal of federal garrisons at the outbreak of the Civil War, together with the provocation of white encroachment, produced a rash of Indian uprisings. In the Southwest, the Apaches and Navajos raided frontier settlements until subdued and relocated by volunteers under Gen. James Carleton and Col. Kit Carson (1862-1864). Carson also led the 1864 campaign to halt Kiowa and Comanche attacks on the Santa Fe trail. In 1862 the Santee Sioux of Minnesota killed more than 600 settlers, after federal Indian agencies had failed to pay “annuities” due and needed for food. The Santee were captured, punished and removed from Minnesota to the Dakota Territory. Hostilities in Colorado led to one of the worst atrocities by whites — the San Creek Massacre of 1864. Promised military protection, chief black Kettle’s Cheyenne and Arapahoe encampment was attacked instead by Col. John Chivington’s Colorado volunteers. After the Civil War ended, the Indian Wars only intensified.