WILLIAM F. CODY ("BUFFALO BILL") | William F. Cody responds to the tenacious "Dr." Joseph Kossuth Dixon, declining to bring Buffalo Bill's Wild West show to Denver

Property from the Collection of Elsie and Philip Sang

WILLIAM F. CODY ("BUFFALO BILL")

AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED ("W. F. CODY") TO "DR. [JOSEPH KOSSUTH] DIXON," DECLINING TO BRING BUFFALO BILL'S WILD WEST SHOW TO DENVER  

Two pages (11 x 8 1/2 in.; 280 x 216 mm) on two sheets of Buffalo Bill's Wild West letterhead, Minneapolis, 24 August 1908; light creases at horizontal and vertical folds, previously stapled at upper left, each sheet bearing four-hole punches with minor losses (but not impacting legibility), closed tear to center left margins. 

Joseph Kossuth Dixon (1856-1926) was a sometime clergyman, photographer, "educational director" of the Wanamaker Department Stores, and documentarian of "the vanishing race" of Native Americans at the turn of the century. In his ongoing efforts to document and preserve the rituals of the Native American Indian, he established a correspondence with a man he described as "typifying American manhood" — Buffalo Bill Cody. 

In the present correspondence, Dixon appears to have further pressed Cody to consider an engagement in Denver — the pair had an ongoing correspondence, and earlier that summer he had reached out to Cody in an attempt to involve his Wild West outfit for a motion picture reenactment of "Custer's Last Stand." (See: Sotheby's New York, The James Copley Library: Arts and Sciences, lot 291.) 

In the face of Dixon's tenacity, Cody responds by enumerating the logistical difficulties of bringing his act to Denver. "First, Denver is a busy city... I will have a thousand personal friends to meet and talk to... Denver is a large city. We would have to travel at least ten miles into the country to find a place to give the Battle... I fear I can't do the Battle for you this season with my company." He ends with an appeal to Dixon's sympathy: "Let's use a little reason about this... I do all I can for Mr. Wanamaker and yourself, not that there is anything in it for me to speak of...  "I am a hard worked man. I work harder than any man living, yet I work to help you all I can."

This was not merely bluster on Cody's part. In 1899, for example, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West covered over 11,000 miles in 200 days, giving 341 performances in 132 locales across the United States.