WHEN THE WILD WEST CAME TO THE EAST END
Buffalo Bill was huge hit during visit to city
COME mosey on down to the wild, wild west with us this week at Times Past HQ. Well, it was this man’s version of the ‘wild west’ at any rate, and generations of Glaswegians believed it, and loved him for giving them a taste of it in their own city.
When William Frederick Cody – better known as Buffalo Bill – came to Glasgow, thousands of people flocked to see him and his collection of stars, including sharpshooter Annie Oakley, right, and genuine Lakota Sioux warriors.
Times Past is delving deep into the archives for this week’s Famous Faces – no-one alive today will remember when the Buffalo Bill Wild West show came to the East End in the 1890s, but it will forever be part of Glasgow entertainment history.
A master publicity guru and king of hype, Buffalo Bill knew how to spread the word about his huge show, which included staged gunfights and ‘cowboys and injuns’ battles – back then, Native Americans were referred to as Indians.
In Glasgow, where he pitched up in 1891 to perform in a specially constructed arena in Dennistoun, he even attended Rangers and Celtic matches.
The troupe spent three months in Glasgow, creating a buzz of publicity the likes of which promoters could only dream about today, and attracting tens of thousands of visitors.
(The site – the East End Exhibition Buildings – is no longer, gone along with all trace of Bill and his friends, although a statue was erected in his memory on Whitehill Street in 2006.)
The show included a very one-sided re-enactment of the Battle of Little Bighorn, plus lasso demonstrations, ‘prairie’ fire simulations and even a small herd of buffalo on stage.
Kicking Bear, a first cousin of the legendary Crazy Horse, became a familiar figure in the streets of the city and he had his photograph taken at a studio in Bellgrove Street.
The show toured Europe and the USA, with markswoman Oakley (incidentally, Cody was one of the first employers to give equal pay to women) a huge draw.
Nicknamed “Little Sure Shot” by
Sitting Bull, she was said to have been able to hit the thin edge of a playing-card from 30 paces.
Later, Buffalo Bill added gauchos from Argentina and specialist horse riders from elsewhere to form the Congress of the Rough Riders of the World.
One of the Sioux Indians, called Charging Thunder, became so at home in his Glasgow surroundings that he ended up spending a month in Barlinnie for unruly behaviour.
During the three months, Cody visited Ibrox to watch Rangers play Queens Park in a Glasgow Cup tie – he apparently wore a white sombrero and got to meet both teams at half-time. His troupe also played a charity match at Celtic Park against the Brandon Club – in which they were well beaten.
One of Bill’s greatest stunts in Scotland was in 1892 when he introduced what he called “genuine African savages” and trained Burmese elephants as special attractions.
Glaswegians could hardly believe their eyes at these sights, which, of course, perpetuated the myth that the ‘wild’ west was a place where white men fought, killed or ‘civilised’ the natives.
Buffalo Bill died from kidney failure at the home of his sister in Denver, Colorado when he was 70 years old. Glasgow, like most cities at the time, loved a wild west show, and our archives have pictures of another, much less famous, attraction.
Broncho Tom’s Wild West Show is pictured here at Vinegarhill off the Gallowgate, now the site of the Forge shopping centre, although not much is know about this particular sharp-shooting cowboy.
Maybe there are some Times Past readers who can enlighten us? Who was Broncho Tom?