The Buffalo Bill Historical Center

24 Jul 2010--Went to the Buffalo Bill Historical Center Wednesday and Thursday (this is Saturday), and on Thursday we also went to a Mormon Chapel...I will tell you about that in a separate posting.

The Buffalo Bill Center is really 5 different museums; The Plains Indian Museum, The Draper Museum of Natural History (also called The Greater Yellowstone Museum), The Whitney Gallery of Western Art, The Cody Firearms Museum, and The Buffalo Bill and the American West Museum. There is so much to see here that they actually give you 2 days to view everything on one entry fee.


Because we have seen a lot of this stuff before, some of it was a bit repetitive, but interesting nonetheless. I have tried to post pics of some things we haven't seen before. I couldn't possibly post all the pics I took,..I would still be loading them if I tried!

A couple things in the the Indian Museum that was interesting was that they used elk teeth to adorn their women's/girl's dresses, and this was a sign of how successful the husband was.

These are some kid's toys.

And they told us that before they had horses, which were brought to America by the Spanish, the Indians used dogs to carry their belongings when they were travelling. They said that a good sized dog could cart up to 75 pounds of goods. So while had dogs as pets, they also put them to work.

The Greater Yellowstone Museum covered the whole area encompassed within the white lines on the map below. Cathy and I were in the Bighorn Mountains, on the right side of the map, the other day when we saw the wild horses.

This would be a great museum for kids because they have all the stuffed animals from mountain goats to moose to grizzlies to badgers...! I am still on the lookout for Moose in Yellowstone, so the next time we go to the park that is what we will be concentrating on.

Here is the back paw print of a Grizzly, with my hand in it for a frame of reference as to how big it really is. And then those are skulls of a Black bear (left) and a Grizzly bear (right)...markedly different.

Cathy was calling to me!

And, of course, my favorites, the Prairie Dogs.

Back in Colorado I showed you a picture of a Burrowing Owl, which often use the tunnels in the ground dug by Prairie Dogs. On the right here I am able to show you just how small these owls are. That is a stuffed one laying on it's back, and as you can see it is no bigger than my hand. They are also very cute.

In the Whitney Gallery they had everything from sculptures to paintings. For those of you that were in the military, doesn't the Indian look like he is teaching new trainees how to march properly??? haha

I love the colors in these cowboy paintings, and then that is a painting of the Grand Canyon.

The Firearms Museum had a total of 2500 firearms over 2 floors of displays. Those are the guns used by "Hoss Cartwright" and "Batt Masterson" in their TV shows.

Don't you love the door knob!?

They had everything from military weapons to the "tommy" gun, every rifle type you could think of and every pistol along with them. Cathy's father Ed and uncle Robert would love this place.

The biggest of the museums was the one about Buffalo Bill and the American West. Of course, you have to start with the buffalo, or bison if you want to call it that.

This is a coach they used to use to get travellers around Yellowstone before cars made it big. It was actually in the West Thumb area of Yellowstone National Park, in 1908, that the biggest stagecoach robbery in US history happened. 17 of these coaches, with a total of 174 passengers, were robbed of $2094.00...the robbers were never caught. ( This info may come in handy if you are ever on Jeopardy!)

Here is a saddle and spurs. The saddle weighs 105 pounds

Info on a chuck wagon.

Bull-dogging is when they jump from the horse down on a steer and wrestle him to the ground. I don't know if I swallow the "up to 30%" figure???!!

This is the actual stagecoach used by Buffalo Bill all over the world in his show.

To his credit, Buffalo Bill appears to have been light years ahead of his contemporaries on the subject of Indians and women. I feel like I would have liked him! haha

Some of the posters advertising his shows around the world. Posters were the primary means of advertising in those days. You can see from the posters that he travelled far and wide, whether it be the Far East or Europe, he was there. All this travelling made him the most well-known American of his time.

There was a section of the museum set aside for western furniture and the like. This day bed is interesting, and the "purple sage smoking jacket ensemble" just kills me!

I don't know if anyone else had one, but I know my family had a hockey game when we were kids that resembled this. But notice as you get closer that the players are Indians and Army people.

I will leave you here with 2 quick videos. The first shows the difference between a human heartbeat, an active bear heartbeat, and the heartbeat of a bear in hybernation.

And this just cracked me up. At the main entrance hall of the museums, performers from the Cody Cattle Company Dinner Show were trying to drum up some business. Yippy, Yi, Yeah!