Then, like a meteor, he flashed upon the people of the East, impersonating upon the stage none other than himself, living over before the footlights his own life.
Men who have criticised Buffalo Bill as an actor forget wholly that he is the only man who is playing himself.
He plays his part as he knows it, as he has acted it upon many a field, acting naturally and without bombast and forced tragic effect.
Be the motive what it may, love of lucre or the gratification of pride, the fact still remains that in his delineation of border life Buffalo Bill educated the people to seeing the hated and ever-dreaded red men in another light.
He was their friend in peace, not their foe always because once upon their trail; and he brought the red man before the public in a way never witnessed before.
Buffalo Bill never was a man-killer, and there was nothing of bravado in his nature and not a tinge of the desperado.
Brought face to face with the stern reality that either his foe or himself must die, when it was in the discharge of duty or self-defense William Cody never quailed in the face of death, and acted, as his conscience dictated, for the right.
But his stage experience gave William Cody the thought of producing border life upon a grander scale than could be done within the walls of a theater, and from this sprang the Wild West exhibitions that have delighted the world.
Conceiving the idea of presenting border life as it was before vast audiences, he at once carried the thought into execution, and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West became the center of attraction wherever it appeared.
After several times swinging around the circle in this country, the Wild West crossed the ocean in a steamship chartered to carry the vast aggregation, and landed upon the shores of England.