The French president and his wife were among the audience of thousands at the debut performance of Buffalo Bill Cody\u2019s Wild West Show at the 1889 Paris World\u2019s Fair.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Cody\u2019s raucous tribute to the golden age of the American West was already a huge sensation in the United States. In 1887, the show had taken the United Kingdom by storm. But the French weren\u2019t quite sure what to make of the Lakota Sioux warriors and lanky cowboys as they came whooping into the outdoor arena, spurring their horses into streaks of lightning. Even one of the show\u2019s most popular acts\u2014the rescue of a stagecoach ambushed by Native Americans\u2014left them cold.<\/p>\n
Then, Annie Oakley skipped into the arena and launched into her act, her guns shattering a flock of glass balls thrown into the air. When her bullets were spent, she threw the pistols like hot irons and grabbed another. The audience roared to life.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Buffalo Bill Cody\u2019s Wild West Show was \u201ca great success in every way,\u201d declared the front page of the Paris Herald the next day. Within weeks, the French capital had been infected by \u201cWild West Fever<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t \n\t\t\t\tAnnie Oakley 1894 Filmed by Thomas Edison\t\t\t<\/p>\n \tIn 1894, Thomas Edison filmed Annie Oakley showing off her sharpshooting skills. Video: Annie Oakley 1894 Filmed by Thomas Edison, silentfilmhouse<\/a><\/p>\n The \u201cSavage Indian\u201d turned French celebrity<\/p>\n By the late 1880s, a deep nostalgia for an American West full of \u201csavage Indians\u201d and \u201cnoble pioneers\u201d\u2014a place that, by then, existed only in memory due to the brutal policies of the U.S. federal government against Native Americans\u2014had settled into the American consciousness.\u00a0<\/p>\n Europeans, too, were intrigued by the idea of the vast plains and their \u201cprimitive Indians.\u201d Indigenous people had been displayed in Paris for decades, sometimes as performers on stage, other times as temporary residents of \u201cliving habitats\u201d in the city\u2019s zoological gardens. Close to 400 Indigenous individuals from French colonies were living on the main fairgrounds that same year. Early anthropologists\u2014adherents of Social Darwinism, the ideology that all human groups occupied a rung of the evolutionary ladder between savagery and enlightened civilization\u2014studied them as specimens in the science of race<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Parisians \u201chad heard about the [American] Indians, but the Wild West Show was their first exposure,\u201d says Steve Friesen<\/a>, former director of the Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave<\/a> in Golden, Colorado, and author of Galloping Gourmet: Eating and Drinking with Buffalo Bill<\/a>. \u201cThey saw the real thing and they were impressed.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Indeed, it wasn\u2019t long before young Parisian women began flocking to the \u201cIndian Camp\u201d at the Wild West Show (the area where the performers lived, which was open to the public). Dozens stood waiting, ready to elbow one another out of the way to proffer cigarettes and coy smiles to the handsome, young Sioux warriors. Men, too, hung around, intrigued by the expert horsemen and sharpshooters. Cowboy hats and American- and Mexican-style saddles flew off the shelves of shopkeepers cashing in on the trend.\u00a0<\/p>\n Popcorn sold at the show, unfamiliar to the French, became so popular that, soon, it could be found at the city\u2019s other sites of entertainment. By October, five months after the debut of Cody\u2019s company, \u201cit was said that the people of Paris seem to go to the [any] theater just to eat popcorn,\u201d Friesen laughs.<\/p>\n Buffalo Bill Cody\u2014Guillaume Buffalo to the French\u2014was the ideal ambassador for the legend of the American West. Back in his own country, he was already a major celebrity\u2014an authentic cavalryman, scout, who claimed to have ridden for the Pony Express, as well as a stage actor known for his charisma and good looks.\u00a0<\/p>\n Soon, \u201che became one of the darlings of Paris,\u201d says Friesen. \u201cEverybody wanted to meet him.\u201d He, along with several of the Native American and cowboy performers, were often seen about town, at the theaters, and on the grounds of the World\u2019s Fair, including climbing the Eiffel Tower, which was built for the event.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t \n\t\t\t\tBuffalo Bills Wild West Show 1908 original footage\t\t\t<\/p>\n \tThis 1908 footage shows Buffalo Bill\u2019s Wild West Show that took Paris by storm in the late 19th century. Video: Buffalo Bills Wild West Show 1908 original footage, Motion Pictures<\/a><\/p>\n For six months, Buffalo Bill\u2019s Wild West Show performed twice a day to a full-to-bursting 30,000-person arena that, despite being some distance from the core of the World\u2019s Fair grounds, sometimes upstaged the main event. No one in town could get enough, including some of Europe\u2019s most famous artists<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cPaul Gauguin went to the show once,\u201d says Friesen. \u201cHe liked it so much he went a second time and then he went out and bought himself a Stetson hat. At the Mus\u00e9e d\u2019Orsay, in a self-portrait he made in Tahiti, he\u2019s wearing a hat that looks very similar.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Edvard Munch visited; French painter Rosa Bonheur was a regular fixture at the Indian Camp, capturing the performers on canvas. It was also in Paris that Cody met Thomas Edison, who was at the fair to demonstrate new electrical technologies. A few years later, he put the showman and his Lakota performers into one of the world\u2019s first motion pictures.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Wild West lives on in Paris<\/p>\n \u201cBuffalo Bill was basically the first emissary of the American West to France, telling people what the West was like,\u201d Friesen says. The appeal was anything but fleeting. When the company returned for a six-month tour of the country in 1905, they reignited the \u201cWild West Fever\u201d that had swept Paris 16 years earlier.<\/p>\n Today, the impact of that \u201cfascination with the American West is certainly still being felt in the larger sense,\u201d he continues.<\/p>\n According to Friesen, the trend of women wearing cowboy hats with skirts, Annie Oakley\u2019s signature style, likely began with the Wild West Show. The kind of \u201cWestern\u201d shops that cashed in on the trend back in 1889 are still found in the city and beyond. There is even a French steakhouse chain called Buffalo Grill that has featured a portrait of Buffalo Bill in its logo.<\/p>\n![\"Annie](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1783691411_362_hqdefault.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"Vintage](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Buffalo_Bill_Cody_ca1875.jpg\")
Buffalo Bill as well as his father were firmly anti-slavery, and Buffalo Bill fought for the Union Army during the American Civil War. Image: Public Domain<\/a> <\/p>\n![\"Buffalo](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1783691412_78_hqdefault.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"Young](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Annie-Oakley-Paris.jpg\")
Phoebe Anne \u201cAnnie Oakley\u201d Moses poses in front of her tent in a camp for Buffalo Bill\u2019s Wild West Show while touring in Europe, possibly in Paris in 1889. Image: Public Domain<\/a> <\/p>\n
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