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.
Presenting Buffalo Bill: The Man Who Invented the Wild West
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.
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Overview
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.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781626727472 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Roaring Brook Press |
| Publication date: | 09/04/2024 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 288 |
| Lexile: | 900L (what's this?) |
| File size: | 11 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
| Age Range: | 10 - 14 Years |
About the Author
Candace Fleming is the author of many acclaimed picture books and biographies for young readers, including Papa's Mechanical Fish ,Oh, No! and the recent, highly awarded The Family Romanov which received six starred reviews, and was named a Sibert Honor book, and won the NCTE Orbis Pictus. Candace lives in Chicago.
Read an Excerpt
Presenting Buffalo Bill
The Man Who Invented the Wild West
By Candace Fleming
Roaring Brook Press
Copyright © 2016 Candace FlemingAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-62672-747-2
CHAPTER 1
ACT ONE
The Boy Will Cody Or "Attack on the Settler's Cabin by Indians and Rescue by Buffalo Bill with His Scouts, Cowboys, and Mexicans."
— Buffalo Bill's Wild West Program, 1894
A Scene from the Wild West
The audience leans forward. In the center of the arena sits a log cabin. Behind it, painted scenery depicts thick woods, peaceful green meadows, and sparkling streams. Into this blissful setting steps the weary hunter, rifle slung over his shoulder. His son waves happily to him from the cabin window. His wife, with open arms, welcomes him at the door. The hunter is home at last.
There comes a shout. It is a Lakota warrior in paint and feathers. He charges toward the cabin.
Pushing his wife behind him, the hunter aims his rifle. He fires.
The attacker drops to the showground. Lifeless.
Now dozens of screaming Lakota — some on foot, some on horseback — hurtle into the scene. They surge toward the cabin.
The hunter and his wife barricade themselves inside. Loading and reloading their weapons they all — even the boy — fire at their attackers.
The arena fills with gun smoke. Audience members' ears ring from the rifle shots and war cries.
Inside the cabin, the hunter and his family are tiring. They are almost out of bullets. All appears lost.
And then another shout!
Riding into the fray, guns blazing, is Buffalo Bill. Behind him gallops a posse of rifle-toting cowboys. There are more gunshots, more bodies dropping to the ground. At last, defeated, the Lakota leap onto their horses and gallop away.
The grateful hunter and his family step out of their cabin. They thank Buffalo Bill and his cowboys. As they do, the audience leaps to its feet, clapping and whistling and tossing hats in the air.
A nugget of truth lay behind this popular act from the Wild West show. William Cody had faced savage foes. He was just ten years old when he first pointed a rifle at a man. Less than a year later, he outran a gang of would-be assassins. But in real life, it wasn't American Indians who'd threatened and terrified little Will Cody. Instead, it was his fellow frontier settlers who attacked his home.
But not at first.
At first, remembered his sister Helen, there was "dancing sunshine ... wood and meadow." And the birth of a baby boy.
The Fortune-Teller Makes a Prediction
According to family legend, Isaac and Mary Cody believed the birth of their second son, William Frederick, on February 26, 1846, fulfilled a mystical prophecy. Seven years earlier, when she was still unmarried, Mary had been visiting her sister in Louisville, Kentucky, when a traveling fortune-teller arrived in town. On a lark, the sisters decided to go. They stepped into the darkened parlor with its mysterious cards and crystal ball.
The fortune-teller took Mary's hand in her own. Turning it palm-side up, she studied the lines she found there, tracing them with her finger. Then she shuffled her cards. "You will meet your future husband on the steamboat by which you are expected to return home," the fortune-teller finally said. "[You] will be married to him within a year and bear him three sons, of whom only the second [will] live, but the name of this son [will] be known all over the world."
Mary did not believe a word of it. That is, not until the first part of the fortune-teller's words came true. She did meet Isaac on the steamboat home, and she did marry him within a year. So when she gave birth to her second son in the Codys' four-bedroom cabin just west of Le Claire, Iowa, a town on a bend of the Mississippi River, both parents looked on him with special hope.
Will grew into a smart, lovable boy who was doted on by his older siblings — Martha, Samuel, and Julia — and later worshipped by the younger ones — Eliza, Helen, May, and Charlie. "He was a superior being," his sister Helen once admitted. "Never did we weaken in our belief that great things were in store for our brother."
His mother, too, fussed over him. She never punished him and only rarely scolded him. Mostly, she worried. Will, it was plain to see, had been born with an adventurous spirit that led him into all kinds of mischief and even danger.
He exhibited this spirit early on. One day in the summer of 1847, when Will was a year old, the town doctor stopped in at the Codys' for a visit. After tying up his horse — "a mean horse [that liked] to kick" — he went inside. Little Will seized his chance. As his family busied itself with its company, Will toddled out the door. He made straight for the cantankerous animal. He was already standing behind the horse's hind legs, his pudgy arms stretching up to pat the horse's flank, when his older sister Julia saw him. Racing outside, the four-year-old girl snatched up her brother just as the horse snorted and kicked. Its powerful hooves just missed the children. "They all sayed I saved Will's life," Julia later recalled, "[and] when the doctor came out ... he called me a brave little girl."
It was obvious that Will needed to be watched every minute. But how? Isaac had a farm to run — cows to milk and fields to plow. And Mary was busy morning to night hoeing the garden, shelling beans, fetching water from the spring, making soap, knitting socks, and cooking. So she turned to Julia. "Your charge is to look after Willie," Mary told the girl. And although Julia was just four years old at the time, she took the job seriously. She never left the boy unattended, not even when she went to school.
The next fall, Julia, along with Martha and Samuel, trudged through woods and meadow to a one-room schoolhouse built of logs. Here Miss Helen Goodrige taught the basics of reading and arithmetic to a handful of students ranging in age from five to fourteen. Eighteen-month-old Will went along, too. But the lively toddler was disruptive. He ran around the room, dipping his fingers into ink bottles and drawing on walls and furniture. Recalled Julia, "[I] took him outdoors when he wanted to go, and when he got sleepy [I] just laid him on one of the benches." Neither Julia nor Will learned much that year.
Skinny-Dipping, Skiffs, and Skipping School
In 1849, news that gold had been discovered in California reached the Cody farm. Overnight, Isaac was seized with gold fever. All he could think about, according to Will, was "that exciting climate of gold, flowers, oranges, sweet odors and fighting whiskey." Selling his property, he bought a covered wagon and prepared to move his family across the country.
The trip, however, didn't happen. "Why, I never knew," wrote Will years later. Some claimed it was because Isaac fell ill. Others say it was because the group he planned to travel with got cold feet after hearing reports about American Indian attacks on the trail. Either way, the Codys remained in Iowa. Renting a house in downtown Le Claire, Isaac went to work as a stage driver on the route between Davenport and Chicago.
Will became a town boy. Barefoot, wearing a brimless hat, one suspender, and a mischievous smile, he raided his neighbors' melon patches, rode other people's horses when he could catch them on the town square, and tied his friends' clothing to the tops of trees while they were skinny-dipping in the river. "I was quite as bad," Will later confessed, "though no worse, than the ordinary, every-day boy."
In 1851, Will — now five years old — was sent to school again. For the next year he struggled with his numbers and letters. "By diligence ... I managed to familiarize myself with the alphabet, but further progress was arrested by a suddenly developed love of skiff-riding on the Mississippi," he later admitted.
Day after day, Will and a handful of friends would sneak away from the schoolhouse. Heading down to the river, they would "borrow" one of the many small flat-bottomed boats that lined the bank. After rowing into the water, they would float along with the current, their fishing lines dragging behind them. Indeed, skiff-riding "occupied so much of my time thereafter that really I found no convenient opportunity for further attendance at school," said Will. His parents, he claimed, never knew he was skipping class. How he managed to escape Julia's ever-watchful eye, however, remains a mystery.
Then one morning Will and two other boys were out on the river when they suddenly found themselves far from the shore. Spring rains had swollen the Mississippi, creating a roiling current filled with tree branches and green ribbons of vegetation. The little boat bumped and rocked. "We lost our presence of mind, as well as our oars," recalled Will. Terrified, the boys screamed for help. Minutes later, a man in a canoe came to their rescue and towed them to shore. But the boys' troubles did not stop there. "We had stolen the boat ... We each received a ... whipping." It was the end of Will's skiff-riding days.
The same year, the mischievous boy took his mother's keepsake five-franc silver coin (similar to a silver dollar) from her sewing basket. Strolling down to the riverbank where a group of older boys were playing, he showed them the coin. Then he walked innocently out onto the pier.
The boys returned to their play.
But just minutes later, Will frantically began searching his pockets. "I guess it must have dropped in the river," he exclaimed.
He had the boys' instant attention. "What dropped?" they asked.
"That five-franc piece," he replied. "Let's see if you can find it."
So while the five-year-old stood on the pier and gave directions, the older boys waded and groped in the shallow water, searching with fingers and toes for the coin.
Meanwhile, someone ran to tell Mary Cody what had happened. Furious, she stormed down to the river, switch in hand, and shouted, "Willie! I told you not to take that [coin] didn't I? And now you've gone and lost it in the river. Come here! I want to see you."
"Aw, Ma," replied Will. "I ain't lost it. Here it is. I was just learnin' 'em how to dig for gold in California." And he handed over the coin, safe and dry.
Already, Will was exhibiting a talent for leadership.
In 1852, Isaac uprooted his family again. This time he moved them to a large farm in Walnut Grove, fifteen miles west of Le Claire. For the next year the family lived in a pleasant, roomy farmhouse set in the sunlight against a background of cool green wood and mottled meadow. Will roamed the countryside, his big black dog, Turk, padding along behind. He built quail traps with string, twigs, and boxes, and checked them twice a day. "I greatly enjoyed studying the habits of the little birds, and devising [ways] to take them in," Will recalled. "Thus I think it was that I acquired my love for hunting."
A Dark and Mournful Day
On a September afternoon in 1853, the Codys gathered around the table for the midday meal. The family had grown, and now seven children tucked into Mary's corn dodgers and crispy fried pork: eighteen-year-old Martha, twelve-year-old Samuel, ten-year-old Julia, seven-year-old Will, five-year-old Eliza, three-year-old Helen, and Mary (called May), who was not quite one. Meal finished, Samuel pushed back from the table. It was time to bring the cows in from the pasture two miles away.
Eager for any chance to sit a horse, Will offered to help. And Samuel agreed. He must have been glad of the extra hands since Isaac wouldn't be helping. Their father was headed to a political meeting at Sherman's Tavern, about a mile away.
The boys went down to the barn. Will clambered bareback onto a slow old mare. Even though he'd been riding since he was old enough to straddle a saddle, his parents refused to let him ride anything but the gentlest horse.
Samuel, though, saddled up Betsy Baker. Betsy came from racing stock, and she was nervous. Time and again their mother had told him not to ride Betsy. The horse was too unpredictable and sometimes behaved badly. But Samuel liked her because she was so fast.
Out of the barnyard the boys rode, Betsy skimming over the fields like a bird, Will's horse lumbering behind. The riders turned onto the road where the schoolhouse sat. Its doors opened, and the students spilled out.
How could Samuel resist such an audience? He had to show off his horsemanship skills. He pulled back on the reins.
Betsy Baker's temper flared. Rearing onto her hind legs, she furiously struck the air with her front hooves before plunging forward to kick out her back legs.
Samuel clung to the reins and kept to the saddle as Betsy reared and bucked again and again.
Then suddenly she calmed, seemingly giving up the fight.
Aware of the schoolchildren's wide eyes looking at him, Samuel cried victoriously, "Ah, Betsy Baker, you didn't quite come it that time!"
At that, the mare reared up, up, up.
Samuel clung to the horse as she hurtled over backward, crushing the boy beneath her.
Will arrived just as Betsy Baker scrambled to her feet.
Samuel, though, remained on the ground. He didn't move.
As the schoolmaster and a group of older students carried the unconscious boy to a nearby house, Will slammed his heels into the sides of his horse. He had to fetch Isaac.
Sherman's Tavern must have seemed a thousand miles away. Arriving at last, he told his father the news. Frantic, Isaac pulled Will off the mare, leaped up in his place, and galloped off for the schoolhouse. Will was left to drive his father's ox-drawn wagon back by himself.
When he finally arrived at the house where Samuel had been taken, he found his entire family huddled around his brother's bedside, weeping bitterly. The boy's injuries were fatal, the doctor told them. There was nothing to be done. "He died the next morning," Will remembered.
The Codys Head West
After Samuel's death, life became almost unbearable for Isaac and Mary. Everywhere they looked they saw their older boy — in the barn, in the pasture, at the supper table. "Gloom fell over the farm," remembered Will. "Father ... [was] heartbroken over it."
It was time to leave. Isaac, who had not been content with Iowa since his failed plans to move to California, now set his sights on Kansas.
In early 1854, the U.S. Senate passed a bill opening up the territories of Nebraska and Kansas to settlement. All a man had to do to acquire territorial land from the government was file a claim and "make improvements," that is, build a house and grow crops.
"Now is the time to make claims," urged one Missouri newspaper. "The country is swarming with [settlers]. Men on horseback, with cup and skillet, ham, flour and coffee tied behind them, and axe on shoulder, are hurrying westward, companies with flags flying are staking out the prairies, trees are falling, tents are stretching, cabins are going up ... Hurrah for Kansas!"
Isaac sold the farm and all the stock except for enough mules and horses to pull his three wagons. He loaded up the family's furniture, as well as the farm equipment. And he hired a man to help drive the rigs to the new territory. Then on a bright spring morning in April 1854, he gave the wagon reins a slap. The Codys headed west.
The journey took weeks. They traveled across Iowa, and through a small section of Missouri. Since this region was already settled, there was no reason to camp or hunt. Instead, the family stopped each night "at the best hotels," recalled Julia, where the maids helped put the children to bed. At last, after crossing the Missouri River by ferry, the family arrived in the new territory.
Eastern Kansas seemed to promise a bright future. From the top of Salt Creek Hill the family looked down on a valley — "the most beautiful valley I [had] ever seen," recalled Will.
But it wasn't the grassy hills or sparkling streams that dazzled the eight-year-old boy. It was the sight of a long line of prairie schooners moving through the valley. Will "got wild with excitement," remembered Julia. Echoing through the valley came the clink and rattle of the wagons, the sharp snap of bullwhips, and the lowing of cattle.
"Where [are] they going?" Will asked his father.
"Utah and California," replied Isaac.
"Oh, my," the boy reportedly gushed, "that is what I am going to do [someday]."
Wasting little time, Isaac staked his claim in Salt Creek Valley. He planted a spring crop of hay. And he hired men to help build a two-story, seven-room log house. While the family waited for it to be completed, they lived in tents on their new land — "the first time I ever camped, or slept upon the ground," recalled Will.
Flying over the Prairie on a Pony Named Prince
The Salt Creek Trail ran past the Codys' Kansas homestead, and there was always something interesting to see. Sometimes the children in the westbound wagons waved to Will as they passed. Cavalrymen from nearby Fort Leavenworth often stopped in. Prospectors, scouts, guides, and traders dropped in with tales of the far west.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Presenting Buffalo Bill by Candace Fleming. Copyright © 2016 Candace Fleming. Excerpted by permission of Roaring Brook Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Copyright Notice,
Dedication,
A Note from the Author,
Introduction,
Fanfare,
Act One: The Boy Will Cody,
Act Two: Boy on the Plains,
Panning for the Truth: The Mormon War,
Act Three: The Youngest Rider on the Pony Express,
Panning for the Truth: The Pony Express,
Act Four: Becoming Buffalo Bill,
Panning for the Truth: Winning the Name "Buffalo Bill",
Panning For the Truth: The Death Of Chief Tall Bull,
Act Five: Starring Buffalo Bill,
Panning for the Truth: Yellow Hair,
Act Six: Rootin', Tootin', Ropin', and Shootin',
Panning for the Truth: Native Performers,
Act Seven: Rough Riders of the World,
Act Eight: Show's End,
Afterword,
Bibliography,
Source Notes,
Picture Credits,
Index,
About the Author,
Copyright,
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