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Karen Kalavity's review of The Galloping Gourmet

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Review of…
Friesen, Steve. The Galloping Gourmet: Dining with Buffalo Bill. Lincoln, NE :
University of Nebraska Press, 2023[...]Steve Friesen is widely known as the longtime
former director of the Buffalo Bill Museum and[...]s on
Buffalo Bill and done much to return America’s[...]wanton slayer of buffalo, and the ultimate[...]thousands of native buffalo and whose show[...]ant.
With the Black Lives Matter movement in[...]and others involved with glorifying the Civil
War in the South were having their
monuments ousted, it might be time for the
likes of Buffalo Bill and other idols of our[...]been evicted from atop the Pioneer Monument[...], but rather something for which I eagerly turned
the pages. But I did begrudge the fact that there were not a lot of visuals. Friese[...]publisher’s decision to cut it down to just 25. The visuals that were included were only in
black and white and not especially high resolution.

The book was about the food that William Frederick Cody (a.k.a. Buffalo Bill) consumed and
served. This ranges from when he was on the plains, dressed in his buckskin garb, roasting
sage grouse over an open fire, to the food that he ate after donning fine apparel to feast at
some of the fanciest restaurants on the West and East Coasts and in Europe. Friesen
highlights the food and preparation that it took to support his[...]numbering 1,500 performers, as he took his famous Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Congress
of Rough Riders of the World from city to city, from New York to London, to Paris and
beyond! The cast included a high percentage of Lakota[...]
[...]times to include over 600 horses, a small herd of buffalo, some mules, a few elk,
some antelope as well as the elephant. The human population was fed three times a day
with meat being the main course, but also including hundreds of loave[...]ruits,
vegetables, and gallons of coffee and tea. The vegetarian animals were fed accordingly.
Admittedly, I am a vegetarian favoring the ethical/environmental reason for not killing
animals.

Cody employed advance men to go to the next city to distribute posters and programs for
the upcoming event, while also procuring contracts fo[...]nation. This was all planned and executed in much the same way that feeding
an army would have been—logistics with which Cody had familiarity as a U.S. Army scout.[...]gued by feeding operations, I also wondered about the
peripheral issues of handling food waste and, fra[...], these curiosities of
mine were not addressed in the book.

As a theme to tie things together, food an[...]paration was a unique and
interesting way to tell Buffalo Bill’s story, although I sometimes became a bit confused
about what time period was being discussed. The man himself, William Cody, was born in
1846 in LeClaire, Iowa, and died at the age of 70 in 1917 in Denver, Colorado, while visi[...]y’s time. He was both a creator and a victim of
the monumental change of the West, as well as how it was perceived on either c[...]ing for a firm that provided
food and supplies to the miners, railroad construction crews, and homestea[...]guide and scout for private hunting
parties where the rich, elite, and influential, such as Gen. Philip[...]s, sage grouse, even prairie dogs, but especially
buffalo (a.k.a. bison). Cody became famous and earned his popular name for slaughtering
large numbers of buffalo. This reputation led to his being recruited as a scout and a hunter
to help feed the U.S. Army. Perhaps though inadvertently, he helped to destroy the American
Indian culture that depended on the buffalo for food, shelter, clothing, and hides.

My convi[...]hat Cody was a true American
opportunist who used the technology of the time, such as the gun and the railroad, to
further his standing and career when the American West was a new frontier to be opened
and exploited. Though he showed no personal grudge against the Native Americans, he was
part of the movement that sought to exterminate them b[...]
specifically by killing off the buffalo. When William Cody first came onto the frontier, there
were millions of buffalo roaming the West, so many that it would sometimes take hours[...]to other species of animals and plants as
well.

Buffalo Bill hobnobbed and sometimes dined with some of the most famous people of his
day, including the writers Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, and Bram Stoker as well as the artists
Edvard Munch, Paul Gauguin, and Frederic[...]rcus fame, as well as Thomas Edison, who provided the lighting for some of his
shows and created a movie about Buffalo Bill that was shown far and wide and became a
model fo[...]y-and-Indian flicks. Popcorn, still a mainstay at the
movies, descended from the popcorn that Buffalo Bill provided for his show’s audiences.

In his performances, Buffalo Bill prioritized the role of the Indians as the most interesting
and popular part. Freisen claims[...]dependent upon rations erratically distributed by the U.S. Army. Cody died with
the realization that he, himself, had been an instrument for the destruction of the Indians
and the West that he had glorified and epitomized.

Karen Kalavity is a Colorado native who appreciates the role of history in shaping the
character of Colorado and its people. She has pra[...]n, which is ironic since cattle are not
native to the western environment but have become symbols of the West at the expense of the
true native species of the region.

MD

This is Karen Kalavity's review of Steve Friesen's book The Galloping Gourmet: dining with Buffalo Bill. Karen Kalavity is a Colorado native who appreciates the role of history in shaping the character of Colorado and its people. She has pra[...]n, which is ironic since cattle are not native to the western environment but have become symbols of the West at the expense of the true native species of the region.
Buffalo Bill, 1846-1917
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