Quotes from Buffalo Bill

I felt only as a man can feel who is roaming over the prairies of the far West, well armed, and mounted on a fleet and gallant steed.

Frontiersmen good and bad, gunmen as well as inspired prophets of the future, have been my camp companions. Thus, I know the country of which I am about to write as few men now living have known it.

I began to think my time had come, as the saying is.

Wild Bill was a strange character. In person he was about six feet and one inch in height. He was a Plains-man in every sense of the word.

Wild Bill was anything but a quarrelsome man yet I have personal knowledge of at least half a dozen men whom he had at various times killed.

The Free State men, myself among them, took it for granted that Missouri was a slave state.

On reaching the place where the Indians had surprised us, we found the bodies of the three men whom they had killed and scalped, and literally cut into pieces.

Stations were built at intervals averaging fifteen miles apart. A rider's route covered three stations, with an exchange of horses at each, so that he was expected at the beginning to cover close to forty-five miles - a good ride when one must average fifteen miles an hour.

Major North and myself went out in advance of the command several miles and killed a number of buffaloes.

The Indians kept increasing in numbers until it was estimated that we were fighting from 800 to 1,000 of them.

My debut upon the world's stage occurred on February 26, 1845, in the State of Iowa.

My mother's sympathies were strongly with the Union. She knew that war was bound to come, but so confident was she in the strength of the Federal Government that she devoutly believed that the struggle could not last longer than six months at the utmost.

So for twelve miles I rode with Sherman, and we became fast friends. He asked me all manner of questions on the way, and I found that he knew my father well, and remembered his tragic death in Salt Creek Valley.

After crossing the Smoky Hill River, I felt comparatively safe as this was the last stream I had to cross.

Having secured my Indian actors, I started for Baltimore, where I organized my combination, and which was the largest troupe I had yet had on the road.

General Custer was a close observer and student of personal character.

My brother was a great favorite with everybody, and his death cast a gloom upon the whole neighborhood.

But the love of adventure was in father's blood.