1. The Good, a wonderful statue of a bucking bronco.
2. The Bad, rewriting history and cultural bias.
3. The Ugly? Hints of modern day cowboys.
A short walk from Bellgrove station is one of our favourite curiosity finds so far – a statue dedicated to wild west celebrity William “Buffalo Bill” Cody riding a bucking bronco!
The Buffalo Bill Statue
For three months in the winter of 1891 – 1892, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show performed in Glasgow. The show was so popular that the East End Exhibition site was expanded to hold 7,000 spectators for it’s visit! When the site was eventually redeveloped as housing in 2006 by Regency Homes they chose to remember the past with a statue of Buffalo Bill on his horse as the centrepiece of a quiet communal garden just off Whitehill Street.
Colonel William F Cody (Buffalo Bill) Buffalo Bill brought his Wild West Show to Dennistoun, Glasgow in October 1891 and it opened on the 16th of November and closed on the 27th of February 1892. The show played at the East End Exhibition Building off Duke Street as part of the great East End Industrial Exhibition set up to raise funds for the People's Palace. He recruited several famous people to perform in his show including Annie Oakley, Kicking Bear, Short Bull, John Shangrau, Johnny Baker, Claude Lorraine Daly and George C Crager. Presented to the people of Dennistoun by Regency Homes and unveiled by Mr Paul Martin MSP on 17 November 2006.
Rewriting History
While the show was undoubtedly a fantastic spectacle in the late 19th Century, it’s important to remember that the version of the American wild west William F. Cody helped popularise was badly biased.
The show which caused such a sensation in the city that winter was entitled The Drama of Civilization. By means of a series of tableaux grouped into six dramatic episodes, it presented a highly culturally biased view of the manner in which ‘civility’ had supposedly triumphed (…) over the course of several centuries of American history.
Scottish National Buffalo Bill Archive
It goes without saying that the American Indians were vilified as the villains of the piece, and that the near destruction of their culture was represented not merely as an unfortunate side-effect but as the crowning glory in the triumphant and inexorable outcome of the process of cultural evolution.
The 1891 visit of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show to Glasgow led to a sacred artefact being dubiously obtained by Kelvingrove Museum. One of the interpreters for the Lakota Sioux travelling with the show, George C. Crager, provided the museum with a collection of items which included a sacred Ghost Dance Shirt. Some records say it was sold, others claim it as a donation alongside other non-sacred items which were officially paid for.
After more than a hundred years on display in Glasgow the shirt became the focus of an early restitution case for returning items in European museum collections back to the original owning communities & people.
More details of how the Lakota Sioux recovered their property can be found in a Lakota Times article and at the Returning Heritage website.
Bellgrove Cattle Pens
The Glasgow Cattle Market moved to Bellgrove in 1879 and saw considerable amounts of cattle arrive by train into two sets of holding pens. By the 1960s live cattle trains has almost disappeared but the meat market survived until the 1980s. The cattle pens to the north east of the railway station are now allotments and those to the south are a small greenspace. Rudy isn’t a gardener so was much more at home snuffling around a path lined with trees and daisies until it was time for his train home!
