Buffalo Bill (Part 2)
in a hunting party. General Sheridan asked Cody to arrange with Chief Spotted Tail of the Sioux to put on a mock battle, war dances, and buffalo hunts. The Grand Duke Alexis of Russia was one of those thrilled by the show. Cody continued as a scout that summer. He received the only injury he ever got in an Indian fight--a grazing scalp wound.
In August 1872, his daughter Orra was born. By that time, Buntline was nagging him constantly to come back east to perform. He finally relented, taking Hickok and Texas Jack with him. He spent the next four winters on stage and the summers scouting. He made enough money to buy a house in Rochester, New York, for his wife, a cattle ranch on the North Platte, and 4,000 acres in the Big Horn basin of Wyoming.
Then he changed his show because he wanted it to be real. He got real sharpshooters, cowboys, and Indians. He did the show outside like a circus. The Wild West, Rocky Mountain, and Prairie Exhibition opened on May 17, 1883 in Omaha, Nebraska, the same year his third daughter Irma was born. Cody played himself. He had a stage holdup, pony express riders, and Indian battles. They fired real guns. The show was an instant hit. In 1885, Cody made $100,000.
The next year he took his show to Europe where it was just as successful as it was in America. In 1893, he made over a million dollars. His ranch in Wyoming was also becoming a very popular dude ranch, the first of its type. Cody was the first to see the possibility of recording the west on film. In 1914, the W. F. Cody Historical Pictures Company filmed a reenactment of the Battle at wounded Knee. The town of Cody, Wyoming was planned by Cody and he paid for the first buildings.
William F. Cody died on January 10, 1917, at 71 years old, at Denver, Colorado. He is buried on Lookout Mountain, twenty miles west of Denver.
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