Buffalo Bill Research Articles

Bucking Nationalism: Masculinity, Patriotism and the Political Rodeo

The rodeo has long been a tool for America to understand nationalism and the American West. The space has been traditionally geared towards masculinity, telling the story of how the men conquered the West and tamed wild beasts. While rodeo remains an essential political tool of American nationalism, it has also served as a space for groups to challenge dominant narratives. Through non-traditional spaces, Black, gay, and other diverse rodeo spaces have created an environment that challenges normative American nationalism. This work studies these spaces and the people associated with the rodeo to understand the political space of rodeos. Looking at rodeos as a contact zones, this paper researches Buffalo Bill's Wild West and the creation of mythology in the West, explores nationalism, and defines political space. Finally, the study of a diversity of rodeos concludes with a new understanding of the power of the Rodeo in American culture.

Buffalo Bill's Wild West, cowboys, and the fate of the western in Italy

Abstract This article examines the first tour of Buffalo Bill's Wild West in Italy and the so-called ‘sfida dei butteri’ (the challenge of the Italian cowboys of the Pontine marshes), which took place in Rome in March 1890. Analysing nineteenth-century Italian newspapers and photographs, I demonstrate that populist, anti-capitalist, and anti-American sentiments marked the Italian media's responses to the American show. In the historical context of Italy's socioeconomic crisis and of the first phase of colonial expansion in Africa (1870–1922), the mixed reception of Buffalo Bill's Wild West, amplified by the media event of the sfida, shaped the fate of the western genre in Italy.

Wittgenstein’s Conception of Translation in His Later Philosophy of Language as an Approach to Cummings’s Untranslatable Concrete Poetry

E.E. Cummings’s concrete poetry raises the canonical problem of poetic untranslatability. It is commonly accepted that a poem is constituted as a unity of form and content, and any change in the form of a poem results in the loss of the poetic value and, eventually, translation failure. Two basic approaches have been proposed regarding the untranslatability of Cummings’s concrete poetry: mimicry and equivalence of effect. However, the former is impractical, and the latter is an indirect one. This paper proposes employing Wittgenstein’s conception of translation in his later philosophy of language to solve the question of the untranslatability of Cummings’s concrete poetry. By analysing three of Cummings’s concrete poems ‘r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r’, ‘mOOn Over tOwns mOOn’, and ‘Buffalo Bill’s’, this study suggests that poetry is translatable in the sense that the same language-game in the source text (ST) can be played in the target text (TT) by reconstruction or invention.

Playing Filipino: Racial Display, Resistance, and the Filipino Rough Riders in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West

Abstract: This article examines the intersection of empire, national identity, performance, and cultural representation through an analysis of the Filipino Rough Riders in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West . Drawing on historical material—including newspaper articles and illustrations, photographs, and Wild West ephemera—this article explores how and why Filipino performers were included in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and how they were represented by the exposition, the press, and the performers themselves. It develops the concept of “playing Filipino,” a phrase that adapts and alters the notion of “playing Indian,” to capture the interactive process of performing not only racialized types for white-dominated audiences and institutions, but also the resistant and creative activity of embodying Filipino-ness through self-crafted style and aesthetic appearance. This study advances transnational Asian American studies by presenting new ways of thinking about turn of the twentieth-century Filipino performers and their relation to US imperialism through cultural institutions and popular entertainment like traveling Wild West shows, and it also expands American West scholarship by considering how Asian subjects figured into constructions of US domestic and overseas frontiers during times of war.

Analyzing the Indian Problem in American Manifest Destiny and the Story of Buffalo Bill Cody in the 1800s.

This study is about the Indian Problem in the History of American expansionism. The 13 colonies and their dream of Manifest Destiny. The study shows how the Indians taught immigrants how to survive in America, but in return, the Americans saw them as savages who needed to be eliminated. To understand all this, I carried out a comprehensive study, on books, Google Scholar, newspapers, Movies, and others. what I found was that Apart from William Penns, who paid the Indians for the Land the King gave him, the new settlers with the dream of Manifest Destiny were ruthless to the Indians and they never respected the agreements they made with them. That was why Buffalo Bill said that every Indian outbreak you see, originated from a broken promise.

The Old World versus the New : Buffalo Bill, Italian Butteri , and the Infamous La Sfida Bucking Contest in Rome, 1890

The Old World versus the New : Buffalo Bill, Italian Butteri , and the Infamous La Sfida Bucking Contest in Rome, 1890

The Shoshone Canyon Conduit Cave: A Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem Sulfur Cave

Fve miles west of Cody, Wyoming and ~25 miles east of Yellowstone National Park lies the Shoshone Canyon Conduit Cave (Fig. 1, Suppl. material 1). Bisecting Cedar Mountain, an irrigation tunnel built by the Bureau of Reclamation (BoR), managed by the Heart Mountain Irrigation District, delivers water from the BoR Buffalo Bill Reservoir to more than 30,000 acres of irrigated lands in and around Cody. During the construction of that tunnel in the late 1940’s, a cave was discovered and the tunnel was made to travel though the cave with only light disturbance to the cave. The cave can only be accessed with permission in the non-irrigation time of year. The cave is rich in sulfides and sulfur deposits with unique speleothems. To date, we have conducted a preliminary geobiological survey of the geochemistry, microbiology and mineralogy of this sulfur cave on its speleothems, mineral deposits and waters. Sampled waters, of which there is little, were all highly acidic (pH < 2). Microbiologically, an analysis of microbial communities present in approximately 25 sample locations (Fig. 1) to answer the question of—who is there?—was conducted via small subunit ribosomal 16S rRNA gene (for Bacteria and Archaea) and 18S rRNA (for Eukarya) analyses, prepared using a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) primer-pair that allows for the even amplification of all three domains of life. All samples were relatively low in biomass and resultant community analysis indicates a variety of Bacteria and Archaea phyla are represented with a dominance of known sulfur metabolizers. Mineralogically, petrography reveals a variety of crystal growth and habit in this sulfur-dominated, calcium carbonate-driven karstic ecosystem. X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD) was used to better determine the kinds and extant of mineral morphotypes and were surprisingly variable. The Shoshone Canyon Conduit Cave is a most intriguing sulfur cave to reveal what is known of the geobiology of sulfur caves in the Rocky Mountain Region. Findings from this work will likely apply to other cave systems such as Villa Luz (Mexico) and the Frasassi system (Italy). Finally, to learn about the Cedar Mountain Caves will inform on how either or both the National Park Service (NPS) and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) may better manage them as a meaningful component of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.

Should AEDs Become More Common in Nursing Homes?

Automated external defibrillators, or AEDs, to manage cardiac arrest have become standard in many community settings. This was evident when first responders had to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and use an AED on Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin, who went into cardiac arrest on the football field in January. By contrast, AEDs are not standard in nursing homes. Nursing facilities that participate in Medicare and Medicaid must be able to provide basic life support (BLS), including CPR, in emergency situations, but they are not required to have AEDs on-site, and the extent of AED use is unknown. It may be time to re-evaluate CPR procedures among residents, says Rebecca Elon, MD, MPH, CMD, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Previously, studies suggested that performing CPR on nursing home residents who experience cardiac arrest is futile, given that the likelihood of survival lessens as individuals age. One study, for instance, found that over a 13-year period, survival 30 days after CPR was performed was 6.7% among individuals aged 70 to 79, dropping to 4.4% among those aged 80 to 89 and 2.4% among those aged 90 and older (Resuscitation 2015;94:28–32). Studies also have found poorer outcomes in individuals who have comorbidities, even when an AED was used. However, Dr. Elon points out, many of those studies are more than a decade old. The most recent study dates to 2006, and none of the individuals in that study received CPR with an AED. Indeed, in four U.S. cities only 6.7% of nursing homes had AEDs, and 10% had manual defibrillators, as reported by another study that same year (J Am Med Direc Assoc 2006;7:413–415). When cardiac arrest occurs, the rate of survival diminishes by about 10% for every minute between the arrest and initiation of CPR, and the risk of prolonged brain damage increases due to cerebral hypoxia. However, recent studies have shown that outcomes have improved when someone witnesses the cardiac arrest and performs CPR using an AED. For example, a 2018 study in Denmark found that between 2001 and 2014, the overall survival in a limited cohort went from 1.7% to 7.7% when a bystander witnessed the cardiac arrest, performed CPR, and used an AED while awaiting emergency medical services (Resuscitation 2018;125:90–98). A German study of nursing facilities in 2020 found that among 2,900 CPR attempts over a seven-year period, only 118 patients (4.4%) were alive when they later left the hospital; 64 of those individuals (2.2% of the total) had a favorable cerebral performance (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2020;117:757–763). The researchers also found that in 64% of those cases the nursing staff did not attempt to resuscitate the resident but instead waited for the arrival of emergency personnel. Besides clinical outcomes, there are other considerations when deciding whether AEDs should be standard in nursing homes, such as staff time, especially considering shortages, and cost effectiveness. “Despite these various potential concerns, providing AEDs for nursing facility staff to utilize in the BLS/CPR protocols might prove to be an important quality-improvement intervention and risk-management tool for nursing facilities,” Dr. Elon writes. Source: Elon RD. Cardiac Resuscitation Procedures in US Nursing Facilities: Time to Reevaluate the Standard of Care? [published online: February 28, 2023]. J Am Med Dir Assoc. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jamda.2023.01.029. Jeffrey S. Eisenberg, a freelance writer in the Philadelphia area, compiled this listing.

Dissecting the Commodified: The Frontier as Hyperreality in Robert Altman’s Buffalo Bill and the Indians

Dissecting the Commodified: The Frontier as Hyperreality in Robert Altman’s Buffalo Bill and the Indians

Awareness of the Importance of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Skills Following the Sudden Cardiac Arrest of Damar Hamlin during a Buffalo Bills Game

Awareness of the Importance of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Skills Following the Sudden Cardiac Arrest of Damar Hamlin during a Buffalo Bills Game

Afro-Catholic Festivals in the Americas: Performance, Representation, and the Making of Black Atlantic Tradition

Afro-Catholic Festivals in the Americas: Performance, Representation, and the Making of Black Atlantic Tradition

God’s Red Son: The Ghost Dance Religion and the Making of Modern America

God’s Red Son: The Ghost Dance Religion and the Making of Modern America

Pioneer Mother

Pioneer Mother

Staging Indigeneity: Salvage Tourism and the Performance of Native American History

Staging Indigeneity: Salvage Tourism and the Performance of Native American History

Riding East—Western Myths, Nostalgia, and the Crossing of Generic Boundaries in Hidalgo (2004)

<i>Riding East</i>—Western Myths, Nostalgia, and the Crossing of Generic Boundaries in <i>Hidalgo</i> (2004)

Heartland (2007–2021 and ongoing)

<i>Heartland</i> (2007–2021 and ongoing)

We Had a Little Real Estate Problem: The Unheralded Story of Native Americans and Comedy

We Had a Little Real Estate Problem: The Unheralded Story of Native Americans and Comedy

What Space Is This Time? Historiography in the Space of History

In asking the question embedded in the title, this article explores the tension between inertia and change in cultural historical studies. Inertia in this context does not mean inactive or inert (i.e., without active properties), but the structural constraints that are revealed when codes, forms, practices, roles, etc., contest. What kinds and forms of socio-cultural knowledge, values, or structures are maintained, developed, or abandoned across geographies and throughout a system’s history? Rather than thinking in terms of core and margin and related binaries of difference and “othering,” inertia and change as historiographical strategies focus on the dynamics that affect social systems and structures, preserving some systems to conserve energy while introducing or forsaking others. In the process of exploring these spaces in historiographical time, this article draws historical examples from attempts among scholars and performers in the United States in the latter nineteenth century to stage “American” histories that stored, rejected, and created past and contemporaneous historical spaces at such sites as Lewis Henry Morgan’s view of Ancient Society (1877), the Columbian Exposition of 1893, and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West.

Sources for advertising and marketing history at the McCracken Research Library, Buffalo Bill Center of the West

PurposeThis paper aims to describe written and visual data sources useful for researching the history of advertising and marketing that are held in the collections of the McCracken Research Library at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming.Design/methodology/approachKnowledge of the McCracken collections has been acquired over several years of online searches and subsequent data analyses, communications with Library staff and from a personal visit to Cody in September 2021.FindingsSeveral digital collections are surveyed. The Roy Marcot Firearms Advertisement Collection visually documents industry practices and also speaks to larger issues in American gun culture. The Winchester Publications provide insights via company magazines into product and management strategies, hardware retailing and visual merchandising tactics during the 1920s. The Schuyler, Hartley and Graham archive of business correspondence illustrate business-to-business marketing from the nineteenth through the early 20th century. The Buffalo Bill Collection reveals how the culturally important Wild West shows were promoted and experienced.Originality/valueThis paper familiarizes advertising and marketing historians with the primary sources in the McCracken Research Library and suggests some potential areas for study.

Monumental Mobility: The Memory Work of Massasoit

In 2017, after a long reclamation battle, the Wampanoag ceremonially reinterred artifacts and remains associated with the seventeenth-century leader 8sâmeeqan (Ousamequin). Massasoit, the name widely used in histories and Thanksgiving pageants, was a title signifying 8sâmeeqan’s leadership role. A century earlier, a Euro-American fraternal order called the Improved Order of Red Men (IORM) commissioned a sculpture to commemorate the tricentennial of the pilgrims’ 1620 encounter with the Massasoit and his people.As current controversies attest, “the urge to commemorate” is never a straightforward one. In this timely book, Lisa Blee and Jean M. O’Brien trace the creation and installation of the Massasoit memorial on Cole Hill in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and its remarkable afterlife.Monumental Mobility explores the “memory work” of public history: “how individuals and collectivities make meaning of the past as distinct from the concrete matter of what actually happened” (7). O’Brien brilliantly addressed these themes in her earlier work on settler colonialism in New England, where displacement of Indigenous people from local history went hand in hand with dispossessing them from their land. The IORM hoped a monument on Cole’s Hill looking out over Plymouth harbor would cement the landing’s importance in the nation’s history. Achieving this goal meant presenting the European arrival as a peaceful encounter welcomed by Indigenous people, thus “shedding the violence” and exculpating guilt around dispossession. Sculptor Cyrus Dallin, raised in Utah Territory and an avid consumer of Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West show, brought his own stereotypes to the commission.Press for the unveiling advertised the presence of 8sâmeeqan’s “only living descendant,” Wootonekanuske/Charlotte Mitchell. The “disappearing Indian” image was so prevalent that newspapers casually erased her siblings and cousins. Mitchell resisted the subordinate role assigned to her in “helping celebrate the killing of my own people” (75). As the statue was unveiled and the band played the Star-Spangled Banner, she turned away from the camera and spoiled the shot. The Mitchells and other Wampanoag activists used commemoration events to bolster land claims and to subvert the narrative of disappearance. On Thanksgiving 1970, United American Indians protesters staged a “Day of Mourning.” They painted the Massasoit statue with red and buried Plymouth Rock in sand. Activism gained the Mashpee and Aquinnah Wampanoags authorship: they shaped interpretation to reflect Indigenous perspectives at Plimoth Plantation and Cole’s Hill, and in their own exhibits.The statue’s history outside New England occupies a significant portion of the book. Dallin donated the plaster cast to the state capitol, but it ended up at Brigham Young University. There, curators engaged in an elaborate tax fraud that involved making unauthorized new castings. The Massasoit figure became a generic trope untethered from tribe, geography, and history, with miniatures sold in tourist shops and larger copies installed in malls, museums, and sculpture parks in Kansas City, Spokane, Chicago, Dayton, and Salt Lake City. This mobility permits Blee and O’Brien to investigate settler colonial narratives in the West. Utah officials rejected Dallin’s proposal for a statue honoring Shoshone leader Washakie and removed the Massasoit from its place of honor in the capitol to make way for representations of Utah history centered on Mormon migrants, actions that simulated the literal dispossession of Utes, Navajos, and Shoshones. Brigham Young University framed its Massasoit statue as a “helper,” a symbol of Indigenous self-sacrifice necessary for Europeans to thrive.If memorials say more about who erected them than they do about the past, sponsors and artists cannot always control the message. Showcasing Blee’s public history expertise, the authors surveyed visitors’ responses to the Massasoit statues. In Kansas City and Dayton, Massasoit stands with other sculptures or art, convincing some that 8sâmeeqan was important without teaching much history. In Provo, the semi-nude statue’s violation of campus dress codes draws more comment than its historical message. Still, for a few individuals the monument inspires reflection about local Indigenous groups and America’s national narrative. As colonized people around the globe tear down monuments, this fascinating book offers a blueprint for closing the gap between the past and present understandings of history.