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Was born in Scott County, Iowa, from whence his father. Isaac Cody, emigrated a few years afterwards to the distant frontier territory of Kansas, settling near Fort Leavenworth. While still a boy his father was killed in what is now known as the "Border War," and his youth was passed amid all the excitements and turmoil incident to the strife and discord of that unsettled community, where the embers of political contentions smoldered until they burst into the burning flame of civil war. This state of affairs among the white occupants of the territory, and the ingrained ferocity and hostility to encroachment from the native savage, created an atmosphere of adventure well calculated to educate one of his natural temperament to a familiarity with danger and self-reliance in the protective means for its avoidance.

From a child used to shooting and riding, he at an early age became a celebrate pony express rider, then the most dangerous occupation on the plains. He was known as a boy to be most fearless and ready for any mission of danger, and respected by such men then engaged in the express service as Old Jule and the terrible Slade, whose correct finale is truthfully told in Mark Twain's "Roughing It." He accompanied General Albery Sidney Johnston on his Utah expedition, guided trains overland, hunted for a living, and gained his sobriquet by wrestling the laurels as a buffalo hunter from all claimants--notably Cornstock, in a contest with whom he killed sixty-nine buffalo in one day to Comstock's forty-six--became scout and guide for the now celebrated Fifth Cavalry (of which General E. A. Carr was major), and is thoroughly identified with that regiment's Western history; was chosen by the Kansas Pacific Railroad to supply meat to the laborers while building the road, in one season killing 4,862 besides door and antelope; and was chief of scouts in the department that protected the building of the Union Pacific. In these various duties his encounters with the red men have been innumerable, and are well authenticated by army officers in every section of the country. In fact wherever you meet an army officer, there, you meet an admirer and indorser of Buffalo Bill. He is, in fact, the representative man of the frontier men of the past--that is, the representative man of the frontiersmen of the past--that is, not the bar-room brawler or bully of the settlements, but a genuine specimen of Western manhood--a child of the plains, who was raised there, and familiar with the country previous to railroads, and when it was known on our maps as the "Great American Desert." By the accident of birth and early association, a man who became insensible inured to the hardships and dangers of primitive existence and possessed of those qualities that afterward enabled him to hold positions of trust and without his knowing or intending it, made him nationally famous.

Gen. Richard Irving Dodge, Gen. Sherman's chief staff, correctly states in his "Thirty Years Among Our Wild Indians"; "The success of every expedition against Indians depends to a degree, on the skill, fidelity, and intelligence of the man employed as scouts, for not only is the common habitually dependent on them for good routes and comfortable camps, but the officer in command must rely on them almost entirely for their knowledge of the position and movements of the enemy."

Therefore, besides mere personal bravery, a scout must possess the moral qualities associate with a good captain of a ship--full of self-reliance in his own ability to meet and overcome any unlocked for difficulties, to be a thorough student of nature, a self-taught weather prophet, a geologist by experience, an astronomer by necessity, a naturalist, and thoroughly educated in the warfare, stratagems, trickery, and skill of his implacable Indian foe. Because in handling expeditions or leading troops on him alone depends correctness of destination, avoidance of dangers, protection against sudden storms, the finding of game, grass, woods, and water, the lack of which, of course, is more fatal than the deadly bullet. In fact, more lives have been lost on the plains from incompetent guides than ever the Sioux and Pawnee destroyed.

Our best Indian-fighting officers are quick to recognize these traits in those claiming frontier lore, and to no one in the military history of the West has such deference been shown by them than to W. F. Cody, as is witnessed by the continuous years of service he has passed, the different commands he has served, the expeditions and campaigns he has been identified with his repeated holding, when he desired, the position of "Chief of Scouts of United States Army," and the intimate associations and contact resulting from it with Gen. W. T. Sherman (with whom he was at the making of the Comanche and Kiowa treaty), Gen. Phil. Sheridan (who was often given him special recognition and chosen him to organize expeditions, notably that of the Duke Alexis), old Gen. Harney, Gens, W. S. Hancock, Crook, Pope, Miles, Ord, Augur, Terry, McKenzie, Carr, Forsythe, Merritt, Brisbin, Embry, Gibbon, Royal, Hazen, Duncan, Palmer, Pembroke, and the hate-lamented Gen. Custer. His history, in fact, would be almost a history of the middle West, and, though younger, equaling in term of service and in personal adventure Kit Carson, Old Jim Bridger, California Joe, Wild Bill, and the rest of his dead and gone associates.