![]() Each night, he donned the very outfit that he wore in battle to reenact a wildly dramatized version of the killing of Yellow Hair, now renamed by Cody as Yellow Hand and promoted to the position of chief, instead of simple warrior. Within a week of his killing Yellow Hair, exaggerated stories of Cody’s bravery under fire began to reach the newspapers.Ī few months after killing Yellow Hair, Cody left the cavalry to return to the stage. ![]() None of the warriors that the men fought had been at the battle of Little Big Horn, known as Custer’s Last Stand, or had likely ever encountered the revered General George Armstrong Custer. According to Cody, he thrust the scalp in the air and shouted, “The first scalp for Custer!” Nobody else at the skirmish remembered him doing that. ![]() But after Cody killed Cheyenne warrior Hay-o-wei, whose name means “Yellow Hair,” Cody scalped the dead warrior and took his warbonnet and weapons as trophies. The fight itself was unextraordinary, lasting only a few minutes. Dressed in black velvet pants and a red silk shirt trimmed with silver buttons, Cody rode out to meet fame and fortune. Before leaving, Cody changed out of the typical sturdy, rough clothing that the rest of the cavalry wore and into his costume. Cody gained permission from his superiors to take a small group of fighters to engage the warriors. A small band of Cheyenne warriors had been spotted heading west in pursuit of two U.S. Opportunity struck a little over a month after Cody joined the 5th Cavalry in southern Wyoming. Army, he signed on to join in the Plains Wars in 1876, announcing from the stage of one of his shows that he was leaving “play acting” in search of the “real thing.” He packed his costume and went off to war. Cody, now having tasted celebrity, went in search of greater fame and found it in battle. The excitement following the widespread slaughter of buffalo began to wane. Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletterĪs famous hunters like Cody popularized buffalo hunting and countless men joined in the killing, they found that they had to travel farther west in search of buffalo as numbers dwindled. Soon, Cody was regularly traveling back and forth-east to star in stage shows, and then back west to continue the wholesale slaughter of buffalo. He began partnering with the authors of dime-store novels and started commissioning plays about his exploits. Wealthy and powerful men from the East Coast and even Europe rode west to join in on the fun, guided by “Buffalo Bill” Cody.Īs journalists traveled with the wealthy men to document the hunts for newspapers across the country, Cody saw his first real opportunity for fame. They killed thousands of buffalo a day, leaving the animals’ lifeless bodies where they fell on the plains to rot. Men from all over the country boarded trains headed west in order to shoot buffalo with. Sherman’s advice to Sheridan was simple: remove the buffalo in order to remove the Indian.Ĭody had gained a reputation as a skilled hunter, and he went to work for Sheridan, killing as many buffalo as he could. Sherman observed that wherever buffalo existed, there would be Native people, and they would continue to fight for land wherever the buffalo roamed. Sheridan reached out to William Tecumseh Sherman, who had distinguished himself with his scorched-earth battle tactics during the Civil War, for advice. Grant appointed Phillip Sheridan as commanding general of the army and asked him to help solve the “Indian Problem” once and for all. In 1869, facing a protracted battle with Native tribes like the Sioux, President Ulysses S. But still, Native communities fought to maintain their lands, and fought well. The United States attacked Native people in every way it could-fighting combatants on the battlefield, killing women and children in their homes, spreading disease, forcing relocation-nothing was off limits. government had declared de facto total war against Native people wherever they stood between the United States and its expansion west. Prime railroad territory was often prime grazing territory, and valuable resources like gold were found in places where the Sioux hunted. As American colonizers looked to expand their territory westward with the building of railroads in the mid- to late 19th century, they came into direct conflict with the Native people who had lived on those lands for centuries. ![]()
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