In American popular culture, Buffalo Bill is an icon whose history we all think we know, a western showman who in the latter decades of the 19th century traveled the world with his Wild West show, enchanting heads of states as well as ordinary people with the romantic fantasy of the American west, made up of wagon trains, gunfighters, Indian attacks, and last-minute cavalry rescues.

His name inspired the name of a professional football team. His Wild West show inspired at least one musical and numerous Hollywood movies and television shows.

Yet do we really know who the man was?

I discovered recently that we do not. Our culture knows nothing about the man, whose real name was William Cody. Worse, its cartoon vision of him denigrates his unique American nature. He was not only the greatest scout the U.S. Army ever saw, his knowledge of American Indian made it possible for him to not only help make peace with those Indians who wanted it, it also helped the U.S. put down those Indians willing only to wage terrorist war. And when he shifted into the entertainment world, his show provided employment for both his many cowboy friends as well as for many of those same Indians, both friends and former enemies.

And most astonishing of all, I discovered that Buffalo Bill’s childhood was one of the most amazing boy adventure tales, far more exciting than any kid’s movie made in the last hundred years. That Hollywood has never made a movie of his youth now baffles me. It is the stuff that Hollywood craves, but more significantly, it appears it actually happened!

I discovered these facts in reading Don Russell’s wonderful biography of Bill Cody, The Lives and Legends of Buffalo Bill, published by the University of Oklahoma in 1979. Russell’s focus was to dig into the original source material in order to separate the fact from the fiction, since much of Cody’s life had been exaggerated by himself and others during his showman days, and then overblown and warped by Hollywood’s later interpretations.

In this Russell succeeds brilliantly. He describes what we know in vivid language, but also outlines what we don’t know or can’t trust about each story. In the end he describes a unique man with unique talents who always tried to do the right thing, even in difficult circumstances. In every sense Cody’s life was the epitome of an American western pioneer cowboy, pushing the unknown with courage and pluck.

But to me the most amazing part of Russell’s biography was its first few chapters, when Russell describes Cody’s childhood. The boy’s father, Isaac Cody, was a pioneer in his own right, taking his family farther and farther west until they ended up in Kansas and involved in the violent politics there preceding the Civil War. When Isaac died in 1857, he left behind a widow and three young children, who then had to find a way to survive in that difficult pioneer world.

And so, at the age of eleven Billy Cody went out to find work. And the work the boy found was truly astonishing, when compared to what we expect from kids his age today.

First he worked driving an ox-team for a neighbor. Then he got a job as an “express boy,” riding a horse to carry messages back and forth between a local store and the telegraph office three miles away. He got the job because he already had experience racing horses locally.

When he got into a kid’s fight with another boy, resulting in a minor knife wound, Cody was sent as a helper on a 40-day train trip (until things cooled down at home), during which the train was almost swamped by a buffalo stampede.

Bill Cody at 19. Click for source.

Still only eleven-years-old, he was next hired as an “extra hand” on a wagon train transporting freight across Kansas. On this trip he met for the first time James B. Hickok, better known today as Wild Bill Hickok (later famous as a gunfighter and lawman), who apparently became the boy’s protector and mentor during that trip. According to Cody:

One of the teamsters … was a surly, overbearing fellow, and took particular delight in bullying and tyrannizing over me and one day while we were at dinner he asked me to do something for him. I did not start at once and he gave me a slap in the face with back of his hand–knocking me off an ox-yoke on which I was sitting and sending me sprawling to the ground.

Jumping to my feet I picked up a camp kettle full of boiling coffee which was sitting by the fire and threw it at him. I hit him in the face, and the hot coffee gave him a severe scalding. He sprang for me with the ferocity of a tiger and would undoubtedly have torn me to pieces, had it not been for the timely interference of my new-found friend, Wild Bill, who knocked the man down. As soon as he recovered himself he demanded of Wild Bill what business it was of his that he should “put in his oar.”

“It’s my business to protect that boy, or anybody else, from being unmercifully abused, kicked, and cuffed, and I’ll whip any man who tries it on,” said Wild Bill. “And if you ever again lay a hand on that boy–little Billy here–I’ll give you such a pounding that you won’t get over it for a month of Sundays.”

They became lifelong friends, so much so that Cody later hired Hickok to perform for a time in his show.

The boy’s adventure continued. He went on several more wagon train drives. On one he and two other men where ambushed by Indians and almost killed. At some point during these drives it appears the boy shot and killed his first Indian, though the story has never been confirmed from independent sources.

Next he went on a hunting expedition with a man named Dave Harrington, who at the time was dating Cody’s 16-year-old sister Julia. During that hunt they were first attacked by a bear. Then the boy broke his leg when he fell while they were stalking a herd of elk. While Harrington went back for help, a journey expected to last three weeks (it eventually took four) the boy was to set up inside their dug-out with provisions and firewood.

For the first eleven days after Dave left, the boy had little to do but lie still. He read the Bible through and a few other books–one of the rare times he mentions reading anything. Like Robinson Crusoe (which may have one of the books) he cut a notch in a stick each day to keep track of time.

The next day he found himself surrounded by Indians, looking for spoils. The boy’s life was spared however because their leader, a well known chief by the name of Rain-in-the-Face, recognized Cody from his wagon train work in delivering goods to Fort Laramie, where this tribe got its reservation supplies. While they took Cody’s rifle and other stuff, they left the boy enough to survive. Seventeen days later Harrington finally arrived, finding the dugout covered with several feet of snow. With Cody laying on a wagon, they took another ten days to get back to civilization, where they sold their beaver skins and other catches for a big profit.

Cody was now about thirteen. He next says he worked as a rider for the Pony Express, though this is also not confirmed. Russell concludes however that it is quite likely, due to Cody’s experience as a horseman and his contacts with the people who ran the express.

Click for source.

Bill Cody did all this before he was fourteen. And he did it to help his mother and family survive, with him always returning home with his earnings.

This experience laid the groundwork for his later work as a buffalo hunter, Army scout, author, and entertainer, with the rest of Cody’s life just as exciting. He played a major role in the Indian wars. Later his entertainment show was instrumental in establishing the pioneer American west in culture and literature world wide.

It is his childhood however that I think we should note. Cody lived at a time when people were willing to let kids work as adults, even if the work they did was tailored to their age. And young Cody was not only expected to work, even if that work could involve real danger. And though his mother repeatedly tried to get him back in school, his ability to bring income to the family was too valuable. And he disinterest in schooling and his independent spirit made it difficult to hold him down.

In the end the experience made him a man. It also made him a successful man who contributed greatly to the society in which he lived.

Nowadays we shelter kids far too much — boys especially — so they grow up untethered to the world and lacking the experience needed to live in it with strength and courage. While it would not be good to have kids miss schooling and be made to work as Cody did, it is just as bad to deny them that experience entirely until they have left college.

Telling the story of Cody’s early life would thus provide future generations a lesson of great value. It still astonishes me no one has yet done it.