Attempts to discern the truths behind the legends built up around his career.

Everyone knows the name Buffalo Bill, but few these days know what he did or, in some cases, didn't do. Was he a Pony Express rider? Did he serve Custer at the Battle of Little Big Horn? Did he scalp countless Native Americans, or did he defend their rights? This, the first significant biography of Buffalo Bill Cody for younger readers in many years, explains it all. With copious archival illustrations and a handsome design, Presenting Buffalo Bill makes the great showman come alive for new generations. Extensive back matter, bibliography, and source notes complete the package. This title has Common Core connections.

William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody was the most famous American of his age. He claimed to have worked for the Pony Express when only a boy and to have scouted for General George Custer. But what was his real story? And how did a frontiersman become a worldwide celebrity? In this prize-winning biography, acclaimed author Louis S. Warren explains not only how Cody exaggerated his real experience as an army scout and buffalo hunter, but also how that experience inspired him to create the gigantic, traveling spectacle known as Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. A dazzling mix of Indians, cowboys, and vaqueros, they performed on two continents for three decades, offering a surprisingly modern view of the United States and a remarkably democratic version of its history. This definitive biography reveals the genius of America’s greatest showman, and the startling history of the American West that drove him and his performers to the world stage.

An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill by Buffalo Bill: "An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill" offers a firsthand account of the life and adventures of the legendary American frontier scout and showman, William "Buffalo Bill" Cody. Key Aspects of the Book "An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill": Wild West Adventures: Buffalo Bill's autobiography recounts his thrilling experiences as a buffalo hunter, Pony Express rider, and performer in Wild West shows. Cultural Icon: The book sheds light on Buffalo Bill's transformation into a cultural icon and his influence on shaping perceptions of the American West. Showmanship and Entertainment: "An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill" reveals the behind-the-scenes aspects of Wild West shows and Cody's efforts to entertain and captivate audiences. Buffalo Bill, born William Frederick Cody in 1846, was an American frontiersman, soldier, and showman. His autobiography provides a personal glimpse into the adventurous life of a historical figure who played a significant role in the popularization of Wild West culture and entertainment.

I am about to take the back-trail through the Old West-the West that I knew and loved. All my life it has been a pleasure to show its beauties, its marvels and its possibilities to those who, under my guidance, saw it for the first time.Now, going back over the ground, looking at it through the eyes of memory, it will be a still greater pleasure to take with me the many readers of this book. And if, in following me through some of the exciting scenes of the old days, meeting some of the brave men who made its stirring history, and listening to my camp-fire tales of the buffalo, the Indian, the stage-coach and the pony-express, their interest in this vast land of my youth, should be awakened, I should feel richly repaid.The Indian, tamed, educated and inspired with a taste for white collars and moving-pictures, is as numerous as ever, but not so picturesque. On the little tracts of his great inheritance allotted him by civilization he is working out his own manifest destiny.The buffalo has gone. Gone also is the stagecoach whose progress his pilgrimages often used to interrupt. Gone is the pony express, whose marvelous efficiency could compete with the wind, but not with the harnessed lightning flashed over the telegraph wires. Gone are the very bone-gatherers who laboriously collected the bleaching relics of the great herds that once dotted the prairies.But the West of the old times, with its strong characters, its stern battles and its tremendous stretches of loneliness, can never be blotted from my mind.

Buffalo Bill lives deep in American legend. A Kansas-bred farm boy, he went on to become a renowned trapper and hunter, army scout, Indian fighter, and finally a world showman and celebrity. As a man of the Wild West, he became known as a larger-than-life buffalo hunter. As an army scout, he earned the Medal of Honor for gallantry in action. But Bill was unsatisfied. Setting his sights higher yet, he traveled the country performing in Wild West stage shows, and eventually founded “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West,” a terrifically successful traveling production depicting cowboy and Indian life on the plains. Bill’s show earned him large sums of money and drove him to intense national prominence at the turn of the century. This is his story in his own words.

For more than thirty years, William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody entertained audiences across the United States and Europe with his Wild West show. Scores of books have been written about Cody’s fabled career as a showman, but his involvement in the film industry—following the dissolution of his traveling show—is less well known. In Buffalo Bill on the Silver Screen, Sandra K. Sagala chronicles the fascinating story of Cody’s venture into filmmaking during the early cinema period. In 1894 Thomas Edison invited Cody to bring some of the Wild West performers to the inventor’s kinetoscope studio. From then on, as Sagala reveals, Cody was frequently in the camera’s eye, eager to participate in the newest and most popular phenomenon of the era: the motion picture. In 1910, promoter Pliny Craft produced The Life of Buffalo Bill, a film in which Cody played his own persona. After his Wild West show disbanded, Cody fully embraced the film business, seeing the technology as a way to recoup his financial losses and as a new vehicle for preserving America’s history and his own legacy for future generations. Because he had participated as a scout in some of the battles and skirmishes between the U.S. Army and Plains Indians, Cody wanted to make a film that captured these historical events. Unfortunately for Cody, The Indian Wars (1913) was not a financial success, and only three minutes of footage have survived. Long after his death, Cody’s legacy lives on through the many movies that have featured his character. Sagala provides a useful appendix listing all of these films, as well as those for which Cody himself took an active role as director, producer, or actor. Published on the eve of the centennial anniversary of The Indian Wars, this engaging book offers readers new insights into the legendary figure’s life and career and explores his lasting image in film.