Georgian Trick Riders In American Wild West Shows 1890s 1920s

In 1893, Georgian horsemen from the Caucasus immigrated to the United States where for more than 30 years they performed in circuses and Wild West shows under the billing of "Russian Cossacks." The connection between Buffalo Bill Cody and the Georgian trick riders represents one of the earliest relationships between Georgia and the United States. Western historian Dee Brown wrote, "Trick riding came to rodeo by way of a troupe of Cossack daredevils imported by the 101 Ranch. Intrigued by the Cossacks' stunts on their galloping horses, western cowboys soon introduced variations to American rodeo." This is the story of the men who came in search of financial support for their families in Georgia and, without knowing it, influenced an essential fixture of American culture.

William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody, star of the American West, began his journey to fame at age twenty-three, when he met writer Ned Buntline. The pulp novels Buntline later penned were loosely based on Cody’s scouting and bison-hunting adventures and sparked a national sensation. Other writers picked up the living legend of “Buffalo Bill” for their own pulp novels, and in 1872 Buntline produced a theatrical show starring Cody himself. In 1883, Cody opened his own show, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, which ultimately became the foundation for the world’s image of the American frontier. After the Civil War, new transcontinental railroads aided rapid westward expansion, fostering Americans’ long-held fascination with their western frontier. The railroads enabled traveling shows to move farther and faster, and improved printing technologies allowed those shows to print in large sizes and quantities lively color posters and advertisements. Cody’s show team partnered with printers, lithographers, photographers, and iconic western American artists, such as Frederic Remington and Charles Schreyvogel, to create posters and advertisements for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West. Circuses and other shows used similar techniques, but Cody’s team perfected them, creating unique posters that branded Buffalo Bill’s Wild West as the true Wild West experience. They helped attract patrons from across the nation and ultimately from around the world at every stop the traveling show made. In Art and Advertising in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, Michelle Delaney showcases these numerous posters in full color, many of which have never before been reproduced, pairing them with new research into previously inaccessible manuscript and photograph collections. Her study also includes Cody’s correspondence with his staff, revealing the showman’s friendships with notable American and European artists and his show’s complex, modern publicity model. Beautifully designed, Art and Advertising in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West presents a new perspective on the art, innovation, and advertising acumen that created the international frontier experience of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West.

The American West and the World provides a synthetic introduction to the transnational history of the American West. Drawing from the insights of recent scholarship, Janne Lahti recenters the history of the U.S. West in the global contexts of empires and settler colonialism, discussing exploration, expansion, migration, violence, intimacies, and ideas. Lahti examines established subfields of Western scholarship, such as borderlands studies and transnational histories of empire, as well as relatively unexplored connections between the West and geographically nonadjacent spaces. Lucid and incisive, The American West and the World firmly situates the historical West in its proper global context.

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Follow the adventures, romances, and tragedies of Georgian men and women who were seduced by the promise and opportunity of making a living in America. Their thrilling feats of horsemanship captured the imagination of the American cowboys to become the gold standard of trick riding through today. Join us as we pull back the canvas and peek behind the scenes into the lives of those who felt both honored and cursed.

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