Welcome to the

Pawnee Bill Wild West Home Page

with an Introduction to

"PAWNEE BILL'S Historic WILD WEST"

A Photo Documentary of the 1900-1905 Wild West Show Tours

Author: Allen L. Farnum

With the Photos of Harry V. Bock (1865-1949)

PAWNEE BILL

Major Gordon W. Lillie

Introduction:

Occasionally, some notably historic piece of Americana - artifacts, photographs, or written material - turns up from forgotten storage. Such is the case with the original find of one hundred and fifty-five pristine negatives of Pawnee Bill's Wild West show on tour made between 1900 and 1905 by cowboy/amateur photographer Harry Bock.

Author/photographer Allen Farnum made new prints of the hand carved wagons, tents, midway crowds, Indians, cowboys, cowgirls, equipment, and buffalo. To go with the collection, he carefully researched the adventure filled life of Major Gordon W. Lillie / Pawnee Bill: buffalo hunter, plains scout, White Chief of the Pawnees, Wild West showman, land boomer, oilman, banker, conservationist. Pawnee Bill, contemporary and lifelong friend of Buffalo Bill Cody, was Cody's main Wild West show competitor and eventually became his financial saviour.

Included with the biography of Pawnee Bill is also one about the photographer, "Buckskin Harry" Bock, another frontier pioneer and cowboy/carpenter who worked many years for Pawnee Bill until becoming a Baptist missionary to the Pawnee Indians in Oklahoma. Together their lives provide a fascinating background to accompany this visual close-up look at a period in life that has gone forever - the Wild West show of the early 1900s - the forerunner of our modern rodeo. This is truly a photo documentary without parallel and offers western, historical, and tent show buffs a visual look back in time with exceptional detail and clarity.

PAWNEE BILL'S Historic WILD WEST belongs in every circus fan,
model builder, early west researcher, and collector's library !

BANDWAGON, The Journal of the Circus Historical Society
says: "It is indeed the finest reference available on that show."

ISBN 0-88740-437-5

Published by Schiffer Publishing Ltd.

The author's intent was basically to preserve in permanent form a treasure trove of early Americana - not to make a profit. For a copy of PAWNEE BILL'S Historic WILD WEST, you may order directly from the publisher at:

http://www.schifferbooks.com
or from:
http://www.amazon.com

About the author :

Born in Manchester Depot, Vermont

Attended Oregon Institute of Technology, Portland

USMC paratrooper and combat photographer WW2

33 years with NBC-TV, Los Angeles as cameraman, audioman, and sound effects engineer

Retired on the banks of the Willamette River

Widower - remarried to The Lady from Spain !

10 children, 24 grandchildren, 6 great grandchildren

So far, a prostate cancer survivor !

Some books to read:

Pawnee Bill .... Glenn Shirley, University of Nebraska Press 1965
The Wild West .... Don Russell, Amon Carter Museum 1970
Buffalo Bill, The Noblest Whiteskin .... John Burke, Putnam 1973

Some research locations :

PAWNEE BILL MUSEUM, Pawnee, Oklahoma
BUFFALO BILL HISTORICAL CENTER, Cody, Wyoming
CIRCUS WORLD MUSEUM, Baraboo, Wisconsin
UNIVERSITY of OKLAHOMA/Western History Collection, Norman

Some WEB sites to visit:

Special Notice !

The Courier, a quarterly publication of
Circus World Museum, Inc., has published an article on their acquisition of the original Pawnee Bill negative collection from author Allen Farnum.
You can read the article by clicking above.

More Pawnee Bill Wild West pictures

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