This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
Americans have always been fond stories reminding us of "how the West was won." A young boy from LeClaire, Iowa, just upstream from Rock Island, could tell you, instead, how the west was lost. He played a role in that story.
William F. Cody was born on February 24, 1846, near LeClaire. The family did not stay long, and by 1869, Cody ended up at Fort McPherson, Kansas, as a scout and a hunter of buffalo to feed the troops. Here, he was discovered by Ned Buntline, a prolific writer of cheap, sensational adventure stories who had come west looking for new material.
Buntline spent a few days with Cody, nicknamed him "Buffalo Bill," and returned east to write Buffalo Bill, King of the Border Men, far more romantic than factual. Its success led to sequels full of ever more hype, and the books made Cody popular as a hero of the wild west.
Cody may not have been a real western hero, but he was a superb marketer and showman, and he knew a good thing when he saw it. On May 17, 1883, on the fairgrounds at Omaha, Nebraska, Buffalo Bill opened his "Wild West Show and Congress of Rough Riders," to an enthusiastic crowd. For the next thirty years, Buffalo Bill's show toured American and Europe, creating an image of the west we still live with.
Unfortunately, much of that image was fake, with little relation to the real west and its true story. For example, one of Buffalo Bill's feats during the show was to ride his white horse into the tent at full gallop, pull out his six-shooter, and break five clay traps an assistant had tossed in the air. Amazing, until one realizes that the six-shooter contained bird shot rather than bullets. It was showmanship, not skill.
There was a price to be paid for this fakery. Buffalo Bill died in Denver in 1917, three years after his show had gone bankrupt. His will asked that he be buried in his hometown of Cody, Wyoming, but the widow sold him instead to tourist interests in Denver for $3,000. You can visit him there today at Lookout Mountain, where he is still a tourist attraction rather than a man who died.
Rock Island Lines with Roald Tweet is underwritten by Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.
