BUFFALO BILL AND ANNIE OAKLEY
Various dates, 1888-1913

William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody, a former member of the Union cavalry and civilian scout for the U.S. Army, and Annie Oakley, a woman from humble beginnings who hunted to support her family, became professionally intertwined in 1887. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show was wildly popular across the country and in Europe. The duo appeared repeatedly in Richmond in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The shows consisted of shooting competitions, feats on horseback, and reenacted battles from the Civil War and wars with Native Americans.

The Wild West show sold romantic ideas of “the West” and “the frontier” to urban dwellers in Eastern cities like RIchmond. By focusing on Native peoples as a common enemy, they also united white Northerners and white Southerners. The Richmond firm of Allen & Ginter understood the local and national appeal of Cody and Oakley. The small cards displayed here were trading cards included in boxes of Allen & Ginter cigarettes.

Allen & Ginter, Hon. W. F. Cody (Buffalo Bill), 1888; Richard K. Fox, Annie Oakley, 1899, Courtesy of the Library of Congress