Post by oglallah on Jul 3, 2023 8:46:14 GMT -6
This is an article I did for the local history mag. I hope those who take the time out to read it enjoy!
Cloth Caps and Cowboy Hats; the Day the Wild West Came to Wigan
On the 29th of September 1904, a small army invaded the cotton manufacturing town of Wigan in Lancashire. Nearly a thousand strong it was a mixture of veteran US soldiers, Lakota Indians, American cowboys, Mexican vaqueros, Arab Spahis (light cavalry), japanese acrobats, wives, consorts and other camp followers. There was also a contingent of teamsters, horse wranglers, carpenters, stage hands, electricians (for the special electric light plants), armourers, cooks and butchers. Together with a convoy of fifty wagons, including a stagecoach, carrying supplies and equipment, they made the trek through the town to Lamberhead Green, a semi rural area just over a mile to the south. It was pure spectacle with the Sioux warriors resplendent in warpaint and eagle feathers, the vaqueros in gaily coloured ponchos and sombreros and the darkskinned Spahis mounted on their spirited chargers. Then came the cowboys wearing stetsons and silver spurred high heeled boots amusing the spectators with rope tricks. And in the vanguard waving gallantly to the crowds lining the roadside, rode Col William Frederick Cody, six feet four and clad in buckskins, thigh length black riding boots and wide brimmed white sombrero. Ex army scout, showman and self-styled killer of Cheyenne war chief Yellow Hair, with cascading curls and well waxed moustache and goatee, at fifty eight still erect astride his prancing horse. It was an entry to make even Caesar blush. Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show was in town.
Arriving at their destination, an area stretching from Lamberhead Green to present day Worsley Hall, an encampment of canvas tents and tipis was erected. Then came the main tent and a number of marquees around a central horseshoe shaped arena. Inhabited by peoples of many nations, it was a town within a town. Two weeks before the Shows arrival hundreds of posters had magically appeared in shop windows, on billboards and vacant walls, heralding the imminent arrival of BUFFALO BILL AND HIS CONGRESS OF ROUGH RIDERS OF THE WORLD! The frenetic schedule included two shows, afternoon and evening (hence the new fangled electric lighting). Admission was priced at one shillings upwards to four with box seats costing five shillings and seven shillings and sixpence. Children under ten were admitted at half price. For a ha'penny you could have a cone filled with popcorn. Programmes and other souvenirs were also on sale. Locals were even allowed to visit the tipis of the Native Americans. Some of those who attended later recalled how they had dressed up in their Sunday best for the once in a lifetime occasion. Some may even have remembered earlier visits to Lancashire by Bill and his Wild West. The famed frontier scout had whooped them up on three previous tours. He had even met Queen Victoria, a huge fan. So the ground was well ploughed.
The Show opened with a review of the entire company who, to the accompaniment of William Sweeney and his Cowboy Band, galloped and paraded around the arena. Then, as the music morphed into The Star Spangled Banner, Buffalo Bill made his dramatic entrance. Mounted on a handsome black steed wearing a silver bridle, a present from Edward Vii back when he was Prince of Wales, with a flourish of his white sombrero he introduced the Congress of Rough Riders of the World who, at his signal entered into a dazzling, kaleidoscopic routine of interspersing concentric circles. Then came the entertainment proper. A panoply of riding and roping and shooting exhibitions performed by the troupe - Cody included. Edwardian Evel Knievel George C. Davis did death defying feats on his bicycle, one of them involving a fiftysix foot jump across a chasm. There were also acrobatics and other spectacular feats. The cavalry and infantry drilled and marksman Johnny Baker showed off his considerable shooting skills. But these were only curtain raisers for the melodramatic main events - frontier vignettes featuring Buffalo Bill as Pony Express rider, Buffalo Bill as buffalo hunter, and Buffalo Bill as the thrilling last minute rescuer of a settlers cabin surrounded by Indians. There was also an Indian attack on the Deadwood stage. Buffalo Bill to the rescue again! And then the high point of the whole spectacle - a re-enactment of Custers Last Stand, the finest hour of Lakota and Cheyenne resistance to white encroachment on their land. The arena echoed with gunfire and the war whoops of triumphant Indian warriors as they wiped out the wasichus. Johnnie Baker, wearing built up boots and a blonde wig, played Custer. The Indians played themselves. Some of them may have even been present at the actual battle. Sitting Bull jnr, son of the chief who had, played the role of his father. For him, like the rest of the Native performers, it was a temporary escape from the grim realities of reservation life. And the pay was good. But of greater importance though, was the opportunity it gave them to present a culture and lifestyle that was fast disappearing, and to relive again the old ways and old victories.
Then it was over. The last shot fired, the last Indian felled, the last settler saved. Buffalo Bill bade the crowded stands farewell and they filtered home with their programmes and souvenirs and memories. In the just dawning century a new medium, made of flickering images, would take on the role of storyteller of the American West, presenting an image that the old scout, both in real life and in fiction, had had a major role in developing. He would even appear before the camera himself. But the movies, captivating as they were, could never deliver the excitement, the experience of being there. You were in the presence of REAL Indians and REAL cowboys and a REAL western hero - Buffalo Bill, attesting to the authenticity of his Frontier tableaux. For Cody himself, the show presented America's, and his own, take on the conquest of the Plains and it's native peoples. He was the most famous American of his day, and the world was wild about the West. But to the hundreds who crowded the canvas covered stands on that long ago day in Wigan, Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show was never anything more than entertainment and spectacle. A temporary bolt hole out of a coal mine or cotton mill and into another world, albeit one long gone.
References
Gallop, Alan. Buffalo Bill's British Wild West. Sutton Publishing Limited, 2001.
Kasson, Joy S. Buffalo Bill's Wild West; Celebrity, Memory and Popular History. Hill and Wang, 2000.
Sell, Henry Blackman, and Victor Weybright. Buffalo Bill and the Wild West. Oxford University Press, 1955.
Stillman, Deanne. Blood Brothers; Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill. Simon & Schuster, 2017.
Warren, Louis S. Buffalo Bill's America; William Cody and the Wild West Show. Vintage Books, 2006.
Newspapers.
Blackburn Times
The Guardian
The Northern Daily Telegraph
The Rochdale Observer
The Southport Visiter
The Wigan Observer
Cloth Caps and Cowboy Hats; the Day the Wild West Came to Wigan
On the 29th of September 1904, a small army invaded the cotton manufacturing town of Wigan in Lancashire. Nearly a thousand strong it was a mixture of veteran US soldiers, Lakota Indians, American cowboys, Mexican vaqueros, Arab Spahis (light cavalry), japanese acrobats, wives, consorts and other camp followers. There was also a contingent of teamsters, horse wranglers, carpenters, stage hands, electricians (for the special electric light plants), armourers, cooks and butchers. Together with a convoy of fifty wagons, including a stagecoach, carrying supplies and equipment, they made the trek through the town to Lamberhead Green, a semi rural area just over a mile to the south. It was pure spectacle with the Sioux warriors resplendent in warpaint and eagle feathers, the vaqueros in gaily coloured ponchos and sombreros and the darkskinned Spahis mounted on their spirited chargers. Then came the cowboys wearing stetsons and silver spurred high heeled boots amusing the spectators with rope tricks. And in the vanguard waving gallantly to the crowds lining the roadside, rode Col William Frederick Cody, six feet four and clad in buckskins, thigh length black riding boots and wide brimmed white sombrero. Ex army scout, showman and self-styled killer of Cheyenne war chief Yellow Hair, with cascading curls and well waxed moustache and goatee, at fifty eight still erect astride his prancing horse. It was an entry to make even Caesar blush. Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show was in town.
Arriving at their destination, an area stretching from Lamberhead Green to present day Worsley Hall, an encampment of canvas tents and tipis was erected. Then came the main tent and a number of marquees around a central horseshoe shaped arena. Inhabited by peoples of many nations, it was a town within a town. Two weeks before the Shows arrival hundreds of posters had magically appeared in shop windows, on billboards and vacant walls, heralding the imminent arrival of BUFFALO BILL AND HIS CONGRESS OF ROUGH RIDERS OF THE WORLD! The frenetic schedule included two shows, afternoon and evening (hence the new fangled electric lighting). Admission was priced at one shillings upwards to four with box seats costing five shillings and seven shillings and sixpence. Children under ten were admitted at half price. For a ha'penny you could have a cone filled with popcorn. Programmes and other souvenirs were also on sale. Locals were even allowed to visit the tipis of the Native Americans. Some of those who attended later recalled how they had dressed up in their Sunday best for the once in a lifetime occasion. Some may even have remembered earlier visits to Lancashire by Bill and his Wild West. The famed frontier scout had whooped them up on three previous tours. He had even met Queen Victoria, a huge fan. So the ground was well ploughed.
The Show opened with a review of the entire company who, to the accompaniment of William Sweeney and his Cowboy Band, galloped and paraded around the arena. Then, as the music morphed into The Star Spangled Banner, Buffalo Bill made his dramatic entrance. Mounted on a handsome black steed wearing a silver bridle, a present from Edward Vii back when he was Prince of Wales, with a flourish of his white sombrero he introduced the Congress of Rough Riders of the World who, at his signal entered into a dazzling, kaleidoscopic routine of interspersing concentric circles. Then came the entertainment proper. A panoply of riding and roping and shooting exhibitions performed by the troupe - Cody included. Edwardian Evel Knievel George C. Davis did death defying feats on his bicycle, one of them involving a fiftysix foot jump across a chasm. There were also acrobatics and other spectacular feats. The cavalry and infantry drilled and marksman Johnny Baker showed off his considerable shooting skills. But these were only curtain raisers for the melodramatic main events - frontier vignettes featuring Buffalo Bill as Pony Express rider, Buffalo Bill as buffalo hunter, and Buffalo Bill as the thrilling last minute rescuer of a settlers cabin surrounded by Indians. There was also an Indian attack on the Deadwood stage. Buffalo Bill to the rescue again! And then the high point of the whole spectacle - a re-enactment of Custers Last Stand, the finest hour of Lakota and Cheyenne resistance to white encroachment on their land. The arena echoed with gunfire and the war whoops of triumphant Indian warriors as they wiped out the wasichus. Johnnie Baker, wearing built up boots and a blonde wig, played Custer. The Indians played themselves. Some of them may have even been present at the actual battle. Sitting Bull jnr, son of the chief who had, played the role of his father. For him, like the rest of the Native performers, it was a temporary escape from the grim realities of reservation life. And the pay was good. But of greater importance though, was the opportunity it gave them to present a culture and lifestyle that was fast disappearing, and to relive again the old ways and old victories.
Then it was over. The last shot fired, the last Indian felled, the last settler saved. Buffalo Bill bade the crowded stands farewell and they filtered home with their programmes and souvenirs and memories. In the just dawning century a new medium, made of flickering images, would take on the role of storyteller of the American West, presenting an image that the old scout, both in real life and in fiction, had had a major role in developing. He would even appear before the camera himself. But the movies, captivating as they were, could never deliver the excitement, the experience of being there. You were in the presence of REAL Indians and REAL cowboys and a REAL western hero - Buffalo Bill, attesting to the authenticity of his Frontier tableaux. For Cody himself, the show presented America's, and his own, take on the conquest of the Plains and it's native peoples. He was the most famous American of his day, and the world was wild about the West. But to the hundreds who crowded the canvas covered stands on that long ago day in Wigan, Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show was never anything more than entertainment and spectacle. A temporary bolt hole out of a coal mine or cotton mill and into another world, albeit one long gone.
References
Gallop, Alan. Buffalo Bill's British Wild West. Sutton Publishing Limited, 2001.
Kasson, Joy S. Buffalo Bill's Wild West; Celebrity, Memory and Popular History. Hill and Wang, 2000.
Sell, Henry Blackman, and Victor Weybright. Buffalo Bill and the Wild West. Oxford University Press, 1955.
Stillman, Deanne. Blood Brothers; Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill. Simon & Schuster, 2017.
Warren, Louis S. Buffalo Bill's America; William Cody and the Wild West Show. Vintage Books, 2006.
Newspapers.
Blackburn Times
The Guardian
The Northern Daily Telegraph
The Rochdale Observer
The Southport Visiter
The Wigan Observer