Still fighting for Buffalo Bill’s body
Nearly 100 years after the death of William (Buffalo Bill) Cody, debate still rages over the location of his gravesite.
Steve Friesen knows he can count on three things in life: death, taxes and the fact that William F. (Buffalo Bill) Cody is buried here, high atop Lookout Mountain with commanding views of the Rocky Mountain foothills and vast Western plains that stretch toward the sunrise.
Friesen, the director of the Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave, is a Cody biographer who’s done his research. He’s consulted the records and examined photographs of the day the famous Indian scout, hunter and dapper showman was laid to rest in 1917 amid public grieving and fanfare. But nearly a century later, doubters remain. About 800 kilometres away, in Cody, Wyo., conspiracy theorists insist the body of this frontier celebrity is buried somewhere atop Cedar Mountain, outside the town he founded.
Even though Buffalo Bill always wanted to be buried in Wyoming, they say, Denver officials bribed relatives, finagling to host the burial. That’s when a band of Wyoming faithful pulled off a caper straight out of Hollywood: they sneaked into the funeral home and replaced the body with a local vagrant, spiriting the real Cody back home to the Cowboy State.
At least that’s how the story goes. Friesen isn’t buying it. “People in Cody have too much time on their hands,” he says.
The Buffalo Bill war of words rankles residents in the neighbour states, where they scratch their heads over the other’s stubbornness. Then there’s the Wyoming residents who acknowledge that Cody is buried outside Denver. But they say they want him back.
“Buffalo Bill is a favourite son here — he put the American West on the map,” says Bruce Eldredge, executive director of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody. “Wyoming residents want him here, the same way Denver wants him there.”
Born in 1846 in Iowa, William Frederick Cody went on to achieve worldwide fame as a buffalo hunter, U.S. army scout during the Indian Wars and host of a touring Wild West show. He died on Jan. 10, 1917.
A1906 will declared that he wanted to be buried on Cedar Mountain, but in a subsequent will Cody left the decision up to his wife, Lousia, Friesen says.
The funeral was attended by thousands of mourners, and Friesen says numerous photographs were taken of close friends and family filing past the open casket. “If it wasn’t Cody, don’t you think that somebody would have said . . . that there’s a fake in there?”
The Buffalo Bill Museum, about 50 kilometres west of downtown Denver, contains numerous Wild West artifacts, including Friesen’s book Buffalo Bill: Scout, Showman, Visionary.
Nearby, Friesen is approached by a tourist who had just bought his book — and then questions whether Cody is really here.
“He is here,” Friesen assures him. “I’ve done the research, doggone it.”