Sud de France 3.0 : Calamity Mary and the Cowboys

Yesterday was the beginning of a “bon weekend” in the nearby town of Gignac starting with the “Gignac Esprit Country” fair. It was kicking off at 2 PM with a “Stage Country” show featuring Calamity Mary and the Cowboys, which was to be followed in the evening by “Crazy Country Dance.” As you can see the poster includes an American flag, a photo of Clint Eastwood, a Western landscape and a picture of an American Indian. 

It reminded me of the powerful effect the American West has had on the French culture and of a story I wrote about seven years ago for the New York Times Syndicate. It was about Buffalo Bill Cody and his Wild West show and the winter they spent camped in the South of France, not far from where we are today.

Buffalo Bill Cody was America’s first celebrity. Before Cody, Americans didn’t much care about the West and certainly didn’t go there. The only fools that would were criminals, out of work soldiers and immigrants from places like Norway who had been promised cheap land but had no idea of what they were getting into. 

Cody had been a hunter and Army scout before he met Ned Buntline, a hack “penny dreadful” writer, over a card game. Buntline was fascinated by Bill’s tales of Indian fighting and his claim to have single-handedly killed millions of Buffalo to feed the workers building the transcontinental railroad. Buntline ended up writing down Bill’s tales embellishing fact and fiction into adventures of over-the-top courage and grit that neatly whitewashed the uglier side of the American West and its hardships. The stories were wildly successful and overnight made “Buffalo Bill Cody” famous.

Now Bill was an old army scout and a pretty smart fellow, so he decided to turn himself into the bigger-than-life character described in the stories.That makes him the first person to re-invent himself and to become a 'brand.' He began the process by letting his hair and mustache grow to resemble the look of the heroic figures in Walter Scott’s popular Ivanhoe tales. He wore a costume of a pair of tall French musketeer boots with a fringed buckskin outfit to complete the look for his character. Soon, to millions around the world, he was the embodiment of the American West; even though by this time the Indian Wars were over, the buffalo nearly extinct and the West was no longer wild. Perhaps that’s why "Buffalo Bill" sold so well, it was a reflection the past.

Photo: Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill.

But Bill wasn't satisfied with being just a storybook character. He wrote stage plays based on the stories and soon appeared as himself, on stage, riding a horse, doing some fancy shooting and rescuing white girls from the crazy Indian savages. He was for all intents the first living action figure and in post Civil war America his exuberance and his confidence raised the hopes of a battered nation. 

But the theater stage was far too small to contain a character as big as Buffalo Bill so within a few years Bill had started something enormous and never seen before,"The Wild West Show.” These were huge productions with hundreds of performers--cowboys and Indians--and dozens of horses and buffalo. Bill would again reenact some of his novel stories, continuing to save maidens in distress, but now he began to take a softer approach with the Indians, they now surrendered more often then getting shot dead. And to appeal to the ladies Bill hired a young sharpshooter named Annie Oakley who thrilled the crowd by shooting silver dollars out in the air.

For the populations of America and Europe's grim industrial cities these shows was the most spectacular and exciting thing anyone had ever seen. So successful and powerful were the Wild West shows that its version of the American West is the one still buried deep in our modern hearts and minds. 

The Wild West show played throughout Europe, for Kings and Queens and millions of ordinary people, all of whom were as astonished as American audiences at seeing living American Indians and a woman sharpshooter.

Then, in 1905, while in the South of France, the tour ran into awful winter weather and was stranded. For Bill it was a disaster until a French marquise named Folco de Baroncelli came to his rescue, offering the show a place to camp on some land along the Mediterranean coast. Bill accepted the offer and pretty soon Lakota tepees were dotting the marshes of the Camargue, near Arles. 

At this point the story gets interesting because the Camargue was already the home to French “Gardiens” who just like the American cowboys ride horses and herd cattle. In no time at all the American cowboys and the French Gardiens were riding the range together sharing cowboy tips. The Camargue is also the home to a lot of French gypsies. When they encountered the Lakota Indians the two dark skinned people realized that they shared a common bond, both were outsiders in their own lands.

Ultimately the result of the Wild West’s tours was to embed American Western culture permanently in France. Today in the Camargue town of Les Saintes Maries de la Mer you'll can find numerous American style tack shops selling American style riding gear and saddles. Modern Gardiens wear cowboy hats and American style cowboy shirts although they are made of brightly colored Provencal fabrics. Travel around France and in almost every town you’ll find a “Buffalo Grille” restaurant with it's little statue of a Bill-like figure greeting you at the door.  

P.S. I wrote this blog  after a visit to Gignac and the next day went to the town of Paulhan for a medieval fête and “vide grenier” (garage sale). 

And there, amidst the crossbows, chain mail wearing re-enactors and tables full odd and ends, I unexpectedly came across more proof of the impact of Buffalo Bill's stay in France.

 Happy trails everyone.

Photos and text © 2010 Steve Meltzer