Before William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody took his Wild West show on the road and became a world famous celebrity, he gained notoriety and made considerable profits performing in anti-Mormon stage dramas.
One featured the heroic Cody rescuing a woman taken captive by a villainous, polygamous Latter-day Saint man. Another reenacted events of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. These and other stage productions portrayed members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in a negative light.
“They give this perception of him as somebody who was manfully defending America against a Latter-day Saint threat,” said Brent M. Rogers, author and historian.
Yet a few decades later, Cody was in Utah meeting with Church leaders, speaking highly of Latter-day Saints and actively recruiting them to settle the region surrounding his town of Cody, Wyoming.
It’s an interesting relationship that Rogers has unraveled over years of research in a new academic book, “Buffalo Bill and the Mormons,” published earlier this month.
“It’s a neat story of trajectory from foe to friend,” Rogers said. “There’s a fascinating and layered story, a lot of interesting things that are happening in this relationship that evolved over time. That’s why you dive into history, so you can learn those things.”
Buffalo Bill’s claim
Known as “Buffalo Bill,” Cody was an American soldier, bison hunter and showman, and one of the most famous and well-known figures of the American West.
As a University of Nebraska graduate student, Rogers worked on The Papers of William F. Cody before he joined the Church History Department and worked on the Joseph Smith Papers.
“You really get to know historical figures and invest in their lives in some ways when you read some of their personal documents,” he said. “I gained that interest and even an affinity for Buffalo Bill when I worked on those papers.”
One question that troubled Rogers is why Cody claimed to have gone to Utah as an 11-year-old boy during the 1857-58 Utah War. Other historians say Cody fabricated the claim and there is no evidence to suggest he was there.
“Why make that claim? Why would that have been important in 1879 when he released his autobiography if it was probably not true?” Rogers said.
Investigating that question led Rogers to learn more about the connections between Cody and early Latter-day Saints.
The 1892 expedition
In his research, Rogers identified two key sources of information that helped him piece together the puzzle.
The first was the journal of Latter-day Saint Junius F. Wells, which he found at the Church History Library. Wells organized the Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Association and later served as assistant Church historian.
In 1892, Wells and others escorted Cody on a “perception and relationship-altering” expedition through Arizona, the Grand Canyon, southern Utah and up to Salt Lake City, Rogers said. Wells described some of what happened in his journal, including a visit at the home of Latter-day Saint Edwin Woolley in Kanab, Utah.
Before sitting down to a meal, Woolley asked Cody to offer grace. Although not particularly religious, Cody smelled the food, bowed his head and offered this prayer: “God bless the hands that made them custard pies.”
When they reached Salt Lake City, Wells introduced Cody and others to the First Presidency, which then included Presidents Wilford Woodruff, George Q. Cannon and Joseph F. Smith. President Woodruff recorded in his journal that Cody and the company “were very much pleased with their visit to Salt Lake City.”
Prentiss Ingraham, who joined the group as a correspondent for the New York Press, said “President Woodruff was a wonderful man at 86″ and told a newspaper reporter of President Woodruff’s “geniality after passing through nearly a half-century of utter and almost relentless agitation.” Following their meetings with the First Presidency, Cody and Ingraham expressed appreciation that “every courtesy was shown them.”
After nearly two decades of presenting Latter-day Saints in a negative light, Cody spoke highly of their faith and hospitality, saying among other things that Church members “treated us with great consideration.”
Cody met the First Presidency again the following year at the Chicago World’s Fair and gave them tickets to his Wild West Show.
“That was an important moment for the relationship… and public perception about the Saints,” Rogers said. “To have the most famous man in America give you positive reports after having just been through a bunch of Latter-day Saint towns and interacting with Latter-day Saint people did a lot to help people understand who the Saints really were.”
Saints in the Big Horn Basin
The second key source was a letter written in March 1900 from Cody to Abraham Woodruff, a son of Wilford Woodruff, discovered in The Papers of William F. Cody.
In the late 1890s, Cody was struggling to establish his town of Cody in the Big Horn Basin of northwestern Wyoming. The famous showman needed a large number of settlers, and he needed to divert water from the Shoshone River.
The ideal model was not far away.
“We have only to look at what the [Latter-day Saints] have done in the great Salt Lake Valley, which at the time of its settlement was the most desolate of deserts; they have made it blossom as the rose, and today there is no more prosperous and wealthy state on the continent, taking into consideration all the circumstances, than Utah,” Cody wrote to a land speculator in 1898.
Cody met with Abraham Woodruff and other Latter-day Saints in February 1900 and generously offered them tens of thousands of acres for free. The Saints accepted the offer, and 100 families moved to Wyoming, where they began building irrigation canals and infrastructure. They also helped to build railroads in the area.
Rogers said the relationship between Cody and the Saints became somewhat strained later when Abraham Woodruff asked for thousands of additional acres in a prime location. Cody said no, and didn’t appreciate it when Abraham Woodruff attempted to use political relationships to influence Cody’s decision. Cody eventually gave the land to the Latter-day Saints when he learned the federal government intended to take it to build a dam.
Despite those business dealings, Cody continued to publicly praise and say uplifting things about Latter-day Saints.
A temple in Cody, Wyoming
More than 120 years after Cody met Abraham Woodruff, President Russell M. Nelson announced a temple for Cody, Wyoming, during the October 2021 general conference.
“The announcement and eventual construction of the temple in Cody’s town brings the story of Buffalo Bill and the Latter-day Saints full circle and forever unites the two,” Rogers said.
The story of Cody and the Saints demonstrates that it’s possible to move beyond stereotypes and prejudice if people are willing to listen to others and share experiences.
“I think that is a good example of what can be learned and observed as we think about Buffalo Bill and his relationship with the Latter-day Saints,” Rogers said.
