Introduction   On Racism   Epigraphs   A History of the Pulps   A   B   C   D   E   F   G   H   I   J   K   L   M   N   O   P   Q   R   S   T   U   V   W   X   Y   Z   

Glossary and Character Taxonomy  Breakdown by Country of Origin   Bibliography   Table of Contents    The Best of the Encyclopedia

Buffalo Bill. The historical “Buffalo Bill,” William Frederick Cody (1846-1917), was a scout and buffalo hunter who lived the life of a frontiersman and cavalry guide for thirty years and the life of a showman, proprietor of his Wild West Show, and maintainer of his own legend for the next 41 years. A fictional version of Buffalo Bill appeared in over 500 stories in American dime novels, with hundreds more appearing in similar English and European magazines. In 1905 Buffalo Bill was the hero of the German Celebrity Pulp Buffalo Bill, der Held des Wilden Westerns #1-386 (1905-1912), beginning a decades-long career as the hero of pulps, gialli, story papers, and heftromanes in twenty languages.

The German Buffalo Bill is the quintessential German cowboy hero. His adventures take him across the United States and the Americas, and he fights Lost Race Aztecs, the skull of Montezuma (which has evil magical powers), evil Indians, evil American cowboys and Easterners. He encounters Lost Race “White Indians of the Yucatan” and fights Lost Race Aztec mummies. He teams up with the Chinese cowboy Lung Hi, Mercedes the Cowgirl, and the Gun Moll Dell Dauntless. He fights werewolves, the Yellow Peril “smuggler king” Wun Lung, Nihilists, "the Mephisto of the Prairies," and the Gentleman Bandit Gentleman Hank. He also makes various native friends and in general makes the world a better place.

Buffalo Bill appears in stories like “The Pathfinder in the Land of the Dead,” “The Blizzard King,” and “The Red Bedouin.”

* I've included the Buffalo Bill stories in the Best of the Encyclopedia category because of both their historical importance and the ideasplosions within them. Historically, the Buffalo Bill stories are signally important because they more than anything else jumpstarted the dime novel/pulp tradition in Europe and Russia. Before 1905 there were a few dime novels/pulps/gialli/heftromane being published, but after the Buffalo Bill dime novel stories were reprinted in 1905 in Germany as Buffalo Bill, der Held des Wilden Westerns everyone wanted to publish, read, and write them, all across Europe and Russia. Buffalo Bill started the European dime novel/pulp craze, which wouldn't subside until the 1950s. A quarter of this encyclopedia's entries wouldn't exist without Buffalo Bill. In terms of ideasplosions, well, the Buffalo Bill stories were mostly Westerns and frontier stories, but when they verged into fantastika they went hard. The evil, haunted skull of Moctezuma! Werewolves! Something called "The Mephisto of the Prairies!" Moreover, and more importantly, the Buffalo Bill stories were often remarkably progressive on racial terms. There was the usual killing of Indigenous peoples, of course, but Blacks, Mexicans, and Chinese each had stories in which they were portrayed in progressive (for the time) ways. 

Table of Contents / Annotations / Blog / Books / Patreon / Twitter / Contact me