Early Reenactors

[Danny Meadows]

The discussion about Categories of Reenactors got me to thinking about the Wild West shows and their costumes. Would they be period correct ?....heck, they were reenacting the period during the period... or would they have evolved into fanciful recreations of what might have been....after all Bill Cody was reenacting from 1872 until he died in 1917. One thing for sure the visuals Cody provided influenced everyone...including Arizona Charlie Meadows.

excerpt:Buffalo Bill Museum

Buffalo Bill’s show business career began on December 17, 1872 in Chicago; he was age twenty-six. "The Scouts of the Prairie" was a drama created by dime novelist Ned Buntline, who appeared in it with Cody and another well-known scout, "Texas Jack" Omohundro. The show was a success, despite one critic’s characterization of Cody as "a good-looking fellow, tall and straight as an arrow, but ridiculous as an actor." Other critics noted Cody’s manner of charming the audience and the realism he brought to his performance. Actor or not, Buffalo Bill was a showman

The following season Cody organized his own troupe, the Buffalo Bill Combination. The troupe’ show "Scouts of the Plains" included Buffalo Bill, Texas Jack, and Cody’s old friend "Wild Bill" Hickok. Wild Bill and Texas Jack eventually left the show, but Cody continued staging a variety of plays until 1882. That year the Wild West show was conceived. It was an outdoor spectacle, designed to both educate and entertain….

"Buffalo Bill’s Wild West" used real cow-boys and cow-girls, recruited from ranches in the West. At first, few people shared Cody's admiration of the cow-boys. Most people regarded them as coarse cattle drivers and used the term "cow-boy" as an insult. By the end of the 19th century, the cow-boy became the much more popular "cowboy," thanks in large part to the Buffalo Bill Wild West shows.

[Bob Boze Bell]

GP. Of course, the Wild West Shows leaned on the style and created fancy looks that eventually caught on with mainstream Western wearers.

[Jeff Prechtel]

Just remember when "Pahaska" took the field in July 1876 with Carr's 5th Cav, he was reportedly wearing a Mexican Vaquero's "stage costume" consisting of black velveteen breeches, with silver buttons and a red shirt....quite a site I'd say. Cody was always a flamboyant dresser.....was that normal in the West......No, but It probably did have an effect on how people perceived the "Westerner", but of course that had been going on to a degree since the colonial times. All one has to do is look to Boone, Crockett & Cooper's Bumpo to see
where it started. You can find lots of old photos from the 1860s onward, displaying men & women attempting to "look the part"....fringed & beaded outfits & etc.