In 1857, at the age of 11, "Buffalo Bill" Cody left home to work as a cattle wrangler with a wagon-freight company that served the Great Plains. After working as a rider with the Pony Express at the age of 14, he served as a Union scout in the American Civil War where he fought in the campaigns against the Kiowa and Comanche Indians. In 1863, he enlisted in the Seventh Kansas Cavalry and fought in several battles in Missouri and Tennessee. He continued his work as a scout with the U.S. Army after the war with the Fifth Cavalry. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in 1872, and although he was one of six civilians whose award was revoked in 1917 (on the basis that only military members should have received the honor), his medal was posthumously restored in 1989.
During his service as a scout with the Fifth Cavalry in 1867, Cody earned his nickname by hunting buffalo in order to feed the crews of the Kansas Pacific Railroad. By his own recollection, he had killed 4,280 buffalo in a period of 17 months. According to a feature about Cody in "New Perspectives of the West" by the Public Broadcasting System (PBS), he supposedly earned his nickname after winning an eight-hour shooting match against the hunter William Comstock. His exploits were eventually popularized and greatly exaggerated in newspaper accounts and dime novels of the period.
In 1869, after the exaggerated portrayals of Cody in the dime novels by Ned Buntline, Cody was transformed into a national folk hero who ranked equally with other heroes such as Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone and Kit Carson. By 1872, Buntline convinced Cody to take his alter ego to the stage in a play called "Scouts of the Plains." Although Cody had no training as an actor, he was a natural showman who attracted enthusiastic audiences to all of his shows. Although his relationship to Buntline ended, Cody continued his role until 1882. The shows were an outdoor spectacle that both educated and entertained audiences with a cast that briefly included "Wild Bill" Hickok and Texas Jack, in addition to live buffalo, elk and other animals.
Contrary to his portrayal as a fierce Indian fighter in the Great Plains, Cody actually treated his former "enemies" with much respect and overall dignity. His Wild West show posters usually portrayed the Indians as the "Americans," and as Cody stated in 1885, "For centuries they had been hounded from the Atlantic to the Pacific and back again. They had their wives and little ones to protect and they were fighting for their existence." His philosophy and concern for people and children in general extended to his stage shows, where he did everything from distributing free show tickets to orphanages to advocating equal pay and voting rights for women.