- Buffalo hunter, Army scout, Showman, and more... -
( 1846 - 1917 )
* List of the stories
and drawings
he appears in :
- WDC 75-01 : "Turkey Trouble", from 1946, by Carl Barks (by name only) ; - WDC 234-01 : "Riding the Pony Express", from 1959, by Carl Barks (by name only) ; - W US 30-02 : "War Paint", from 1959, by Carl Barks (by name only) ; - D 96089 : "The Vigilante of Pizen Bluff", from 1996, by Don Rosa ; - IC ZP 103B : a cover illustration for "The Vigilante of Pizen Bluff", from 1998, by Marco Rota. |
* His biography :
William F. Cody,
called Will or Willie by his family, was born on February
26, 1846, in a log cabin west of the Mississippi River in Scott County,
Iowa Territory, son of Isaac Cody and Mary Ann Bonsell Laycock.
By the time he was 15, William had been a bullwhacker,
a mounted messenger, a trapper, a gold prospector and a Pony Express rider.
He served 18 months in the Civil War as a scout for the 7th Kansas Cavalry.
After the war, in 1967-1968, Cody
briefly operated a hotel, drove a stage, and he gained his nickname
for killing 4,280 buffalo in eight months to feed the Union Pacific Railroad
workers. He became one of the most renowned prairie
scouts and received the United States Medal of Honor in 1872
for gallantry as an army scout, but a congressional ruling in 1917, shortly
after Cody's death, caused his medal to be revoked.
Already heralded in dime novels
by 1870, in 1872 Cody took to the stage portraying himself. On July 17,
1876, just three weeks after Custer and the 7th Cavalry met disaster at
Little Big Horn, Buffalo Bill had his most famous encounter. Cody led a
squad of soldiers and scouts in a reckless charge on a squad of Cheyennes.
In the ensuing hand-to-hand fight with Cheyenne sub-chief Yellow Hand (actually,
Yellow Hair), Cody killed the Indian leader and took "the first scalp for
Custer." This event had an electric affect on the United States. Cody,
the warrior, had validated Cody, the actor. The real drama on the plains
brought realism to the melodrama on stage. Legend was now elevated to myth.
In 1883, Cody created the Wild
West show, a vehicle that propelled him to fortune and worldwide fame.
Buffalo Bill was also instrumental in settling the North Platte region
of Nebraska and the Big Horn Basin of Wyoming. In later years Buffalo Bill’s
Wild West would star the sharpshooter Annie Oakley,
the first "King of the Cowboys," Buck Taylor, and for one season, "the
slayer of General Custer," Chief Sitting Bull.
Cody even added an international flavor by assembling a "Congress of
Rough Riders of the World" that included cossacks, lancers and other
Old World cavalrymen along with the vaqueros, cowboys and Indians of the
American West.
Cody died on January 10, 1917 in
Denver, Colorado.
* His place in the Barks/Rosa stories universe
:
In "The Vigilante of Pizen
Bluff", which takes places 1890, Scrooge meets him along with his uncle
Pothole McDuck, Annie Oakley, Geronimo
and Phineas T. Barnum, who are working in the
Wild
West show. All together, they chase, fight and catch the
Dalton brothers, who have just stolen Barnum's money. But in this same
story, he tells Pothole that he already knew Scrooge, at North Platte,
(he calls him Buck), and that it was him who gave him the idea of doing
western shows. Then, Bill and Scrooge talk together about their past life
since they have last seen eachother, and Bill tells him that he even went
to Europe with this show, while Scrooge tells he had been a prospector
in Montana, a Lion hunter in Africa, and a coconut trader in Pacific, so
they must have met before 1884 (at this date, Scrooge became a copper prospector).
Fortunately for Don Rosa, Bill could have very well been in Arizona in
1890, as he had just returned to America after a tour in Europe along with
Annie.
He then also appeared on a cover
illustration for "The Vigilante of Pizen Bluff",
by Marco Rota.
He also appeared by name in Barks' "Turkey
Trouble", "Riding the Pony Express", and "War Paint".
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