Wild West

“ You have no doubt read or heard stories of the great wild West. Perhaps you have even listened to some gray-haired man or woman tell tales of the Indians and the trappers, who roamed over the hills and plains. They may have told you, too, of the daring Pony Express riders who used to go dashing along the wild trails over the prairies and mountains and desert, carrying the mails, and of the Overland men who drove their stages loaded with letters and passengers along the same dangerous roads. ”

“ The Wild West visited many of the principal cities of this country, played a winter season in New Orleans, a summer season at Staten Island, and the winter of 1886–87 in Madison Square Garden in New York. But with the immortal bard who wrote “ambition grows with what it feeds on,” Colonel Cody and Mr. Salsbury had an ambition to conquer other nations. The importance of the undertaking was fully realized, but nothing daunted by all that would have to be undergone to reach a foreign land and give exhibitions, the owners of the Wild West boldly made the venture. ”

“ Captain Mayne Reid "The Scalp Hunters"
Chapter One. The Wild West.
Unroll the world’s map, and look upon the great northern continent of America. Away to the wild west, away toward the setting sun, away beyond many a far meridian, let your eyes wander. Rest them where golden rivers rise among peaks that carry the eternal snow. Rest them there.
You are looking upon a land whose features are un-furrowed by human hands, still bearing the marks of the Almighty mould, as upon the morning of creation; a region whose every object wears the impress of God’s image. ”

“ Young Wild West was beyond a doubt the greatest and best known of the heroes of the Wild West, and though but a boy in years, he had made a name for himself that many an elder person would have been proud to own. ”

“ The wild freedom, mobility, and fierce love of liberty of the mounted Indians of the Plains will perhaps always stir imaginations—something like the charging Cossacks, the camping Arabs, and the migrating Tartars. There is no romance in Indian fights east of the Mississippi. The mounted Plains Indians always made a big hit in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. Little boys still climb into their seats and cry out when red horsemen of the Plains ride across the screen. ”

“ Born at a time, and reared in an atmosphere, the most romantic and adventurous known in the history of our American frontier, when the tidal wave of human progress, sweeping westward, was making history faster than the historians could record it—it was his fate to be in the field, and his fortune to grasp the opportunities to meet the situation’s requirements, and, in the beaten path of what seemed ordinary daily duty, to rise, by reason of his sterling qualities, his daring, and his courage, to the distinction of a leader. ”

“ MANY are the things that have been done to the West in the name of art and fiction by the ignorant, the innocent, the deliberate faker, the plagiarist, and the patronizing car-window tourist. "The best Wild West writers live in Brooklyn, New York, and most of the prominent Wild West artists reside in Lyme, Connecticut." The craftsmen in ink and color and acting picture the cow-puncher with leather "panties" wrong side foremost, wide "hanky," large gun, large spurs, large quirt, and large muffler. ”

“ Urge your artist to draw the line between the Wild West show article and the real man. I am writing him, asking him to give us something out of the usual cut-and-dry foundry product of Western cow-men. I have urged him to accent languor in his Texas men. My advice was to take Russell of Montana as a guide to the range man. Russell can draw a cow-puncher, swimming naked in a lake, that any Western man can recognize at a glance. Russell plays to the gallery, but he has to live, and the standard is set in the markets. ”

“ On Friday morning, May 4th, at 11 A. M., amid the cheers, well-wishes, and handshaking of a vast crowd, the Wild West left Manchester by special train for Hull, where the last performance in England was given on the afternoon of Saturday, May 5th, and at 9 o’clock on that evening the entire effects of the monster aggregation were aboard the good ship Persian Monarch, upon which vessel, under the command of the brave, gallant, and courteous Captain Bristow, the Wild West left for New York the next morning at 3 o’clock. On the homeward voyage Colonel Cody’s favorite horse Charlie died. ”

“ The next great days of the wild West were the cattle days, which also reached their height soon after the end of the great war, when the North was seeking new lands for its young men, and the Southwest was hunting an outlet for the cattle herds, which had enormously multiplied while their owners were off at the wars. The cattle country had been passed over unnoticed by the mining men for many years, and dismissed as the Great American Desert, as it had been named by the first explorers, who were almost as ignorant about the West as Daniel Webster himself. ”

“ It was because of my great interest in the West, and my belief that its development would be assisted by the interest I could awaken in others, that I decided to bring the West to the East through the medium of the Wild West Show. ”

“ The members of the London Workingmen’s Association, representing large bodies of workingmen, have a friendly270 word to say at a time when your visit to this country is fast drawing to a close.
They desire to approach you in a spirit of congratulation and to place on record their thorough appreciation of the enterprise and ability displayed by you in the conception and creation of the brilliant realistic spectacle known as the Wild West, fully realizing its magnitude and its value from an educational standpoint as a vivid picture of past life on the American frontier. ”

“ When I first came West, with my imagination fired by the reminiscent tales of my mother and my father, and our pioneer neighbors, I looked only for mountains made of gold, for roaming buffaloes and skulking savages, for fierce wild beasts and mighty hunters. That the mountains were golden only in the sunset, and the Indians and bison alive only in the immortal epics of the frontier, somehow did not disappoint me. So wonderful were those rocky upheavals in the reality, so intriguing were the traces of redskin and buffalo, I forgot my fantastic misconceptions. ”

“ Having disposed of the cowboys, Young Wild West now asked the keeper of the saloon if he thought there would be any objections to their pitching a camp somewhere around in the vicinity.
"I reckon not," was the reply. "There ain't no one as lives here in Big Bonanza, what would 'ject ter anything like that. They've all heard tell about Young Wild West, I reckon, an' some of 'em says as how they've seen yer. Yer kin bet that yer will be welcome here! Jest help yourselves ter any spot yer want." ”

“ After paddling, and hauling, and lifting, and tearing, and wading, and toiling, and struggling, for three weeks, our hero and his friends found themselves deep in the heart of the unknown wilderness—unknown, at least, to the civilised world, though not altogether unknown to the trappers and the Red Indians of the Far West.
There is something inexpressibly romantic and captivating in the idea of traversing those wild regions of this beautiful world of ours which have never been visited by human beings, with the exception of a few wandering savages who dwell therein. ”

“ The few inhabitants of Big Bonanza were not in the habit of seeing female visitors.
"Well, gentlemen," said Young Wild West, "we have just dropped in here by accident, and I reckon if there's no objection we'll camp around here somewhere until morning. We are making a trip across the state, and we are going in a straight line as much as possible. What we happen to strike makes little difference to us; whether it is a mining camp or a desert. We are used to all kinds of traveling, and generally go prepared for anything." ”

“ The discovery that a new world existed on the western shores of the Atlantic was scarcely more a surprise to the grandees of the Old World, than the realization that far beyond the great Father of Waters there existed a country whose inhabitants were hunting buffaloes and living in rude tents on prairies and amid rugged mountains, which needed but the plow and the miner’s pick for keys to unlock treasuries filled with richer products and rarer gems than the bright gleam of the mythical Aladdin’s lamp e’er shone upon. ”

“ Invited to the studios of artists in Rome, Berlin, Paris, and elsewhere, Buffalo Bill extended the courtesies of his camp to many whose names are known the world over by their works. The Wild West became a central place of attraction to artists as well as to military men and statesmen, and often painters and sculptors were seen going about the camp looking for subjects for their brush and chisel. ”

“ The widely-famed Far West is not to be compared with even the tamest portions of Scotland or Wales. You stand upon the prairie, and see the unbroken horizon all round you. You are on a great plain, which is like a sea without water. I am exceedingly fond of wild and lonely scenery, and believe that I have the faculty of being as much impressed by it as any man living. But the prairie fell, by far, short of my preconceived idea. I felt no such emotions as I do in crossing Salisbury Plain. ”

“ The vast, comparatively unknown, even called great, American Desert of twenty-five and thirty years ago was peopled only by the descendants of the sturdy pioneers of the then far West—Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas, etc.—born, raised, and used to hardships and danger; and attracted only the resolute, determined adventurers of the rest of the world, seeking an outlet for pent-up natures imbued with love of daring adventure. ”

“ It was evident that the novel and startling display had won the fullest approval of the experienced sight-seers of the gay capital; and in France audiences rarely if ever take the middle ground. With them approval or commendation comes promptly and is quickly manifested, and the immediate triumph of the Wild West was a subject of hearty congratulation. As in England upon his first appearance there Colonel Cody was welcomed by those highest in authority and honor, so in France the initial performance was graced by the presence of the notables of the republic. ”

“ When it is taken into consideration that these operations were dealing with an expenditure of over one hundred and thirty thousand dollars, the greatness of the enterprise can be understood. An arena of more than a third of a mile in circumference, flanked by a grand-stand filled with seats and boxes to accommodate 20,000 persons, sheltered stands for 10,000 more, the standing-room being 10,000, will give an idea of the size of the Wild West exhibition grounds. ”

“ I drew rein a moment on the ridge, and looked wistfully back along the forest trail.
Before me spread civilization and the waters of the Pacific; behind me, vague and vast,337 lay a hundred memories of the Wild North Land.
* * * * *
For many reasons it is fitting to end this story here. Between the ridge on the west shore of the Frazer and those scattered wooden houses on the east, lies a gulf wider than a score of valleys. On one side man—on the other the wilderness; on one side noise of steam and hammer—on the other voice of wild things and the silence of the solitude. ”

“ Then what shall we say of the wide West—until recently an unknown region—with its variety of natural wonders, its wild mountains, appalling peaks and lonely valleys, industries, mines of wealth, gorges, streams, plains! It is grand, notwithstanding its development is yet in its infancy. Its possibilities for future greatness are inconceivable even to the hardy pioneer. ”

“ You pronounce the West wild, and you never think of the long winters that bred in silence and brooding solitude those storm-periods which seem so primitively savage; of the days wherein each nature is thrown upon its own resources, with nothing to feed upon but itself and its own personal interests. ”

“ The men who went out to the North-west as voyageurs and servants in the employment of the rival companies from Canada and from Scotland hardly ever returned to their native lands. The wild roving life in the great prairie or the trackless pine forest, the vast solitudes of inland lakes and rivers, the chase, and the camp-fire had too much of excitement in them to allow the voyageur to return again to the narrow limits of civilization. ”

“ There was, in the first place, then, the West of the fur trade, the trade that had come down through so many vicissitudes, legacy of Louis the Grand Monarch and his covetous intriguers. For generations the coureurs du bois, wild peddlers of the woods, had traced the ultimate waterways of the far Northwest, sometimes absent for one, two, or more years from the place they loosely called home, sometimes never returning at all from the savagery that offered so great a fascination, often too strong even for men reared in the lap of luxury and refinement. ”

“ If we are to seek the actual truth, we ought most to value contemporary records, representations made by men who were themselves a part of the scenes which they describe. In that way we shall arrive not merely upon lurid events, not alone upon the stereotyped characters of the "Wild West," but upon causes which are much more interesting and immensely more valuable than any merely titillating stories from the weirdly illustrated Apocrypha of the West. We must go below such things if we would gain a just and lasting estimate of the times. ”

“ As the noted scout is revealing to the eyes of the whole world the scenes in which he has been a participant, there are few indeed who do not care to see the Wild West in miniature as he portrays it with the aid of his Indians and cowboys, and give him praise for his phenomenal success. Having157 produced the Wild West in all the large cities of America, Buffalo Bill decided, so to speak, to “carry the war into Africa,” and the result was that with his partner, Mr. ”