Popular Culture Review Vol. 4, No. 1, January 1993 | Page 54

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Popular Culture Review

Contrary to the enticements of the advertisements and Buffalo
Bill’s claims that his show was "educational," audiences did not
gather to become informed about the history of their country.
Newspaper reporters such as Ned Buntline, and others more
reputable, had been writing stories and features on the settling of the
West and the Indian wars for several years. Dime novels had helped
to popularize the characters and events, while greatly exaggerating
the facts. Buffalo Bill himself capitalized on episodes such as his
"duel with Yellow Hand" by quickly reproducing the action on stage
in the form of a melodrama. But by 1890, the peak year of Buffalo
Bill's Wild West Exhibition, the frontier days were all but over. One
year after "The Drama of Civilization" opened, the Dawes
Allotment Act was passed, allotting acreage to individual Indian
families and claiming the remainder as U.S. property. Just a few
years later, the Battle at Wounded Knee marked the official end of
the Indian wars. It is significant that the Wild West Exhibition's
period of greatest popularity came when the issue was all but
decided. Once it b^am e clear who the "victors" really were, the
nation stood ready to proclaim them heroes.
The settling of the West had long been a driving preoccupation of
the American people. Some scholars argue that it is the single most
influential factor in the determination of our p>olitical and social
fabric.^ In his famous paper, "The Significance of the Frontier in
American History," (1890) Frederick Jackson Turner concluded that
"the significance of the West lay not only in having provided the
United States with an empire on its doorstep, and room for the
natural expansion of the Anglo-Saxon race; its significance lay also in
the social and cultural effects which the actual process of filling this
area had on the American people."^ Famous politicians and
celebrities such as Andrew Jackson and Daniel Boone had idealized
the image of the self-made man and the concept of rugged
individualism. Horace Greeley's advice to "Go west, young man, and
grow up with the country" was given credence as a likely formula for
success. The wide open spaces of the west were an agrarian dream to
those urban dwellers suffering the effects of over-crowded cities and a
failing economy. As state after state was added to the union, national
pride grew seemingly in proportion to the size of the country. Other
countries sought to add to their colonies; the United States needed to
go no further than its own continent to prove its strength.