Further Reading 


Until recent years, very little published information has existed specifically on Buffalo Bill�s Scottish venues. Thanks however to the dedicated scholarship of a select group of individuals, that gloomy picture is fast being transformed.

�Your Fathers the Ghosts� - Buffalo Bill�s Wild West in Scotland, by Tom F. Cunningham, published by Black & White Publishing, Edinburgh, on 16th November 2007, draws upon the full range of pre-existing scholarship in combination with several years of original research to produce what is intended as the definitive - though by no means final - work on the subject.

Your Fathers the Ghosts was preceded by an earlier work by the same author, The Diamond�s Ace - Scotland and the Native Americans, published in 2001 by Mainstream Publishing, also of Edinburgh. Approxiately half of The Diamond�s Ace was devoted to documenting the story of the Indians who travelled to Scotland with Buffalo Bill and the continuing aftermath.

Chapter 1, Ghost Shirt Diaries, forms a comprehensive record of the �Glasgow ghost shirt� saga, which burst onto the headlines during the 1990s, a simmering legacy of events taking place in the city more than a century before.

Chapter 4, Drums Along the Molendinar: When Buffalo Bill�s Wild West Came to Glasgow told what was then known of the story of the Lakota Indians who spent several months in the East End of Glasgow during the momentous 1891-92 season.

Chapter 5, Buffalo Bill Rides Again: Scotland�s Indian Summer of 1904, takes up the trail of the Lakota contingent on Buffalo Bill�s tour of Scotland in 1904. As regards both of these chapters, Your Fathers the Ghosts represents a very major upgrade.

The Diamond�s Ace is now out of print but an amended and expanded version will hopefully appear in the future.

Sam Maddra�s excellent illustrated and highly recommended booklet, Glasgow�s Ghost Shirt, published by Glasgow Museums in 1999, serves as a splendid and scholarly introduction to the themes explored in greater depth in her Ph.d. thesis on Buffalo Bill�s 1891-92 season, published in 2006 by the University of Oklahoma Press under the title of Hostiles? The Lakota Ghost Dance and Buffalo Bill�s Wild West, was published in book form by the University of Oklahoma Press in 2006. REVIEW

Likewise, Alan Gallop�s wonderful book Buffalo Bill�s British Wild West (Sutton Publishing, 2001) contains much vital background material. It runs to five pages on the 1891-92 Glasgow sojourn, while the 1904 season is accorded the most summary of treatments. Nevertheless, this work sets the scene beautifully, and opens up the broader context of the show�s three visits to Great Britain. The book�s great strength is that it leaves the door wide open for more detailed close-ups of particular regions - e.g. Scotland - while equally it is extremely difficult to foresee a future time in which this volume is not the leading text on Buffalo Bill in Great Britain.

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Buffalo Bill�s Wild West in Scotland