Buffalo Bill’s Great Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World performed two shows in Bangor’s Maplewood Park – the future Bass Park – on July 15, 1908, a century ago tomorrow. Nearly 15,000 people, mostly out-of-towners from as far away as Aroostook County, paid 50 cents to attend the first show at 2 p.m., said the Bangor Daily News. Another 10,000, mostly from the Bangor area, attended at 8 p.m.

Buffalo Bill was probably the country’s most famous showman, and he is one of the few 19th century entertainers still famous today. His show had just spent several years touring Europe. Not only was William F. Cody a great impresario and hero of dime novels, he had participated in some of the real-life events re-enacted in his show while a buffalo hunter, U.S. Army scout and American Indian fighter. Many considered the show educational.

The excitement began on May 8 when an advance man came to town to announce that Bill and his retinue of rough riders, crack shots and wild Indians, then performing at Madison Square Garden, were coming to Bangor for the first time in eight years. Bill would be there in person, “notwithstanding the fact he is over 60 years old, as alert and vigorous as ever,” the Bangor Daily Commercial said.

This would be the only “real tent show” that summer in Bangor, the newspaper informed readers, although its prediction proved wrong. In August a conventional circus operated by the Cole Brothers visited the Queen City, complete with a street parade, which was something Bill wasn’t offering that year.

Late in June, Buffalo Bill’s Advertising Car No. 1 arrived at Union Station with a force of 25 lithographers and bill posters. The interior of the railroad car looked like a print shop, loaded with posters of every size and color. Some, the size of billboards, were stored in pieces, reported the Bangor Daily Commercial on June 24. Paste and brushes, ladders and tack hammers with handles 10 feet long completed the load.

“The first car doesn’t bother with the city. But the crew takes the posters and paste and tack hammers, hires wagons of the local livery stable men and starts out through the country,” the story reported. “Every barn that is near the highway and presents a surface to be decorated with a poster is marked by the advertising men.”

They got permission from the farmers in exchange for a few free passes. The posters were “a great thing to keep the cold winter from blowing through the cracks” of an old barn. Rocks, telegraph poles and country churches also were decorated.

A few days before the show, another advertising car would arrive and paper the city. Among the advertising gimmicks were cloth posters given to teamsters to keep flies off their horses.

As the days went by, promotional pieces began appearing in the newspapers. “EVER SEE FOOTBALL ON HORSEBACK?” one headline wanted to know. Another advertised Mr. Johnny Baker, the crack rifleman who would shoot “tiny objects from the back of a running horse.”

Charles C. Downs, one of Bangor’s oldest residents, provided a local angle for the Bangor press. Buffalo Bill had been chief of scouts at Fort McPherson, Neb., where Sgt. Downs was stationed. They had fought American Indians together in the late 1860s and early 1870s, including at the Battle of Summit Springs.

During that memorable event, Buffalo Bill claimed to have shot and killed the Cheyenne Chief Tall Bull and captured his horse, “a noble animal.” (There were several variations of this story, and historians aren’t sure who really killed Tall Bull.)

Downs’ story had a grisly twist of its own. After an Army surgeon cut off Tall Bull’s head “to preserve it for examination,” Downs was obliged to hold it until the surgeon remounted his horse, the Bangor Daily Commercial reported on July 9.

The Battle of Summit Springs was scheduled for re-enactment in Bangor. It was billed as “A thrilling engagement between the crafty and relentless Redman and the courageous and victory-crowned soldiery of Uncle Sam.” Despite such hopelessly slanted propaganda, Cody’s troupe included a large retinue of American Indians who apparently had no trouble with this take on things.

Buffalo Bill was a huge success, the newspapers agreed. Mexicans, Cossacks, Japanese, English and German cavalrymen and, of course, American cowboys, cowgirls and American Indians, including the famous Chief Iron Tail (one of the models for the Indian on the old buffalo head nickel), participated in scenes of trick riding, lassoing, sharpshooting and acted out episodes from Western settlement including “The Great Train Hold-Up.” To top it all off, Buffalo Bill himself appeared on horseback, looking a bit older but still able to ride full tilt around the fairgrounds.

This was only one of many Western-style performances in Bangor by live Western shows. Buffalo Bill alone appeared in the Queen City eight times between 1874 and 1911, according to the Buffalo Bill Museum near Denver.

Bangoreans already had seen a silent movie, now famous, called “The Great Train Robbery.” Americans’ thirst for Western mythology was unquenchable, but live shows soon were replaced by Tom Mix and many other giants of the silver screen re-enacting the same stories as Buffalo Bill.

Dana Lippitt of the Bangor Historical Society and Dick Shaw provided information for this column.

wreilly@bangordailynews.net