Buffalo Bill

Buffalo Bill, also known as William Frederick Cody (1846-1917), won his nickname in a bet against William Averill Comstock (1842-1868) in the spring of 1868. At the time, Cody was a Civil War veteran, civilian scout for the Third Cavalry Regiment, and contract buffalo hunter for the crew laying track for the Union Pacific Railway in Kansas. Comstock was also a Civil War veteran, great-grandnephew of novelist James Fenimore Cooper, and chief of scouts and interpreter for Custer's Seventh Cavalry, the regiment stationed at nearby Fort Wallace.

The officers at Fort Wallace put up $500.00, wagering that Comstock could kill more buffalo on horseback in one day's time than Cody could.

On the day of the bet, the officers arranged for an excursion train to travel from St. Louis to the end of the track at Monument. Cody's wife Louisa and baby daughter Arta were on board with the rest of the audience. The officers provided champagne and lunch for contestants, bettors, and spectators.

Cody rode out on his horse Brigham and shot his favorite Springfield Model 1863. The rifle, which he named Lucretia Borgia after a popular Victor Hugo--and Renaissance--villainess, was possibly the one he was issued in the Civil War. Cody had had the rifle factory-upgraded to breech-load and fire .50-.70 cartridges. Comstock rode I-do-not-know-which-horse and used his 16-shot Henry rifle.

The hunt started at 8:00 a.m. and ended around 4:00 p.m, with Cody the winner. He shot 68 or 69 buffalo (reports vary) to Comstock's 48. Buffalo Bill describes the event most vividly in his autobiography.

Comstock already had a cool nickname, Medicine Bill, so he was stuck with that. He had earned this nickname several years earlier when he had saved the life of a Sioux woman with a deadly rattlesnake bite on her finger. He bit the finger clean off.

We get the word buffalo from Greek boubalos, originally a kind of African antelope. The word came into English through Latin, maybe Portuguese, and Middle French, by 1580.

William Frederick Cody, "Buffalo Bill."

United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID cph.3a21252.