William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody

He Earned the Medal—Then Became a Legend of the West

William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody was born on February 26, 1846, near Le Claire in Iowa Territory. His childhood unfolded during the violent political struggle over slavery that transformed Kansas Territory in the years before the American Civil War. After his family moved west, Cody grew up in an environment shaped by frontier travel, military roads, freighting, settlement, and conflict. His father, Isaac Cody, was an outspoken opponent of the expansion of slavery into Kansas and died in 1857 after years of declining health following a politically motivated stabbing. William was still a boy when family circumstances pushed him toward work and an unusually independent life.

When the Civil War engulfed the United States, Cody eventually entered formal military service. In 1864 he enlisted as a Private in Company H of the 7th Kansas Volunteer Cavalry. This was genuine enlisted Army service, distinct from the civilian scouting work for which he later became famous. He remained with the regiment through the closing period of the war and was mustered out in September 1865. His Civil War service established his formal military rank as Private and connected him directly with the Union war effort.

That service was later recognized by the Civil War Campaign Medal. The Army Civil War Campaign Medal was established by the War Department in 1907, more than four decades after the conflict, to recognize qualifying service in the Union Army and volunteer forces during the Civil War. Its creation reflected a broader effort to formally commemorate surviving veterans whose wartime service had occurred before the United States developed the modern system of campaign decorations. Cody was still alive when the medal was established, and his verified service with the 7th Kansas Cavalry fell within the recognized Civil War service period.

After the war, Cody returned to civilian life and married Louisa Frederici in 1866. He tried several occupations before returning to the Plains, where his skill with horses, firearms, travel, and wilderness conditions became central to his livelihood. During the construction of the Kansas Pacific Railroad, he obtained work supplying buffalo meat to railroad crews. It was during this period that the nickname “Buffalo Bill” became permanently associated with him.

Cody’s growing reputation as a plainsman brought him back into close association with the United States Army, but this time in a different capacity. Unlike his earlier enlisted service as a Private, his later work as a guide and scout was civilian employment attached to Army cavalry commands. “Civilian Scout” accurately describes this role, but it was not a formal military rank.

Beginning in the late 1860s, Cody served Army units as a scout and guide during operations on the Great Plains. His knowledge of terrain, travel routes, water sources, animal movement, and frontier conditions made him valuable to commanders conducting long-distance cavalry operations. He worked closely with Army forces during campaigns involving the 5th Cavalry and later the 3rd Cavalry, participating in dangerous reconnaissance and field operations during the Indian Campaigns.

The defining military action of this period occurred on April 26, 1872, at Loupe Fork of the Platte River, Nebraska. Cody was serving as a guide attached to the 3rd U.S. Cavalry when he distinguished himself during an engagement there. The official citation for his conduct was remarkably concise: “Gallantry in action.” Those few words became the foundation for one of the most important honors of his life.

On May 22, 1872, William Frederick Cody received the Medal of Honor for that action. At the time, the Medal of Honor was the nation’s highest military decoration and one of the few formal means available for recognizing extraordinary conduct in combat. Cody’s decoration was unusual because his gallantry occurred while he was serving the Army as a civilian guide rather than as an enlisted soldier.

His Medal of Honor later became the center of a major historical controversy. During a sweeping review of earlier Medal of Honor awards, the Army examined hundreds of decorations that had been granted under nineteenth-century standards. In 1917 Cody’s name was removed from the Medal of Honor Roll because he had been serving as a civilian scout when the action occurred.

That decision did not remain permanent.

Decades later, the circumstances of his service were reconsidered. In 1989, the U.S. Army Board for Correction of Military Records restored Cody’s Medal of Honor, recognizing again the gallantry for which he had originally been decorated in 1872. The restoration permanently returned his name to the Medal of Honor Roll and reaffirmed the military significance of his service at Loupe Fork of the Platte River.

The year 1872 also marked a turning point in Cody’s public life. His frontier reputation had already begun attracting national attention, and he soon entered the world of theater. He appeared in western stage productions that blended real frontier figures with dramatized stories of the American West. Cody discovered that the public was fascinated by the scout, hunter, cavalryman, and frontiersman he represented.

From those theatrical beginnings grew the enterprise that made him internationally famous. In 1883 he launched Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, a large outdoor exhibition that presented horseback riding, marksmanship, staged frontier battles, buffalo hunting scenes, military displays, and performances by cowboys, Native American participants, and other skilled riders and shooters.

The Wild West became far more than an American entertainment. Cody took it across the United States and eventually to Europe, where enormous audiences encountered his dramatic version of frontier life. His company performed before royalty and ordinary spectators alike, turning the imagery of the American West into an international cultural phenomenon.

The performances helped establish the visual language that generations would associate with the frontier: cavalry riders, scouts, cowboys, Native warriors, buffalo, firearms, and sweeping landscapes. At the same time, the show transformed complicated and often violent histories into popular entertainment. Cody’s legacy therefore became inseparable from both the real history of western expansion and the mythology that grew around it.

Despite his international fame, Cody remained connected to western development. He invested in ranching, mining, tourism, irrigation, and land development. He became closely associated with the town of Cody, Wyoming, and supported efforts intended to attract settlement and economic development to the region. Not all of his ventures succeeded financially, and his later years were marked by significant business difficulties.

Buffalo Bill’s Wild West ultimately ceased operating in its original form in 1913. Financial problems forced Cody to continue appearing with other touring productions, but even in old age his name remained one of the most recognizable symbols of the American frontier.

William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody died in Denver, Colorado, on January 10, 1917, at the age of seventy. He was later buried on Lookout Mountain in Colorado, where his grave became a destination for visitors interested in the history of the American West.

His life crossed several dramatically different worlds. He had been a Private in the Union Army, a civilian Army guide and scout, a Medal of Honor recipient, a buffalo hunter, a stage performer, an international showman, and a western entrepreneur.

His two recognized military medals reflect different chapters of that life. The Civil War Campaign Medal commemorated his formal service as a Private with the 7th Kansas Volunteer Cavalry during the Civil War. The Medal of Honor recognized his gallantry while serving as a guide with the 3rd U.S. Cavalry at Loupe Fork of the Platte River, Nebraska, on April 26, 1872.

The Medal of Honor was once taken from his record, but history ultimately returned it. By the time of its restoration in 1989, the man himself had been gone for more than seventy years, yet the name William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody had long since become inseparable from the story—and the legend—of the American West.