Thermopolis, WY to Cody, WY

The hot springs of Thermopolis didn't detain us long, fascinating and restful though they are; the state-run baths restrict guests to wallowing to just twenty minutes, which is, it turns out, slightly longer than I can cope with blood-hot water and the sulphurous smell of eggs. There were buffalo though - not in the baths, but wandering along the roadside of the state park - and impressive beasts they are too. We ended up learning quite a lot about them today, including the fact that they are not really buffalo at all, but bison. You have to be careful who you mention that to, though, especially at our next stop.

Cody, WY, (population a whopping 9689), is named for its founder William F. Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill. It's one of those names that one hears, but before today I would have been hard pressed to tell you exactly who he had been. On a good day I might have vaguely suggested that he was a sort of showman but it turns out he was so much more than that. The Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody put us right, describing him as nothing less than the world's first global superstar. He was certainly the genuine article: a wheeler-dealer frontiersman and scout who explored the wilderness of the west and became a colonel in the US cavalry amongst many other exploits, all of which were celebrated across the world.

British Buffalo Bill fiction.

Somehow, Cody transmuted this reputation into a theatrical career: by the 1870s he was playing himself on stage in New York in the winter months and spending the summers back out west in the saddle, generating new material. Eventually he ended up impresario and star of a blockbuster live show 'Buffalo Bill's Wild West', which toured America and Europe for twenty years, delighting the likes of Queen Victoria and Kaiser Wilhelm. Along the way he became a fictional character too, immortalised in newspaper stories and even British penny dreadfuls and boys' own comic books, well into the 1930s.

It's an astonishing story and he was an astonishing man: an advocate of women's rights as well as the fair treatment of the native peoples of north America, even though he had been their enemy on the plains as a scout. And then he set up a city here, on the way to Yellowstone. He built a hotel in it too, expecting tourist traffic to flood this way and look, here I am, sat in room 59 over one hundred years later. It's all very impressive. Just don't call him Bison Bill.

Despite the name, the museum here wasn't just all about William Cody. There was an exhibit on Yellowstone itself, a gallery of beautiful western photography and a whole wing given over to the Plains Indians. It was a wonderful exhibit - non-judgmental, focussed on the artefacts they created and used, and on explaining their way of life. It is impossible to see such things and not think of the terrible impact of us (the texts referred to Euro-Americans) upon them, the dreadful and savage events of Sand Creek or Wounded Knee, the decline of these indigenous cultures. But America, at times a wholly abstract concept, has been created as much by force of will as by force of arms; and in this wilderness especially it feels like nothing more than an idea imposed upon a landscape. The native peoples of the plains were required by nineteenth century America to abandon their ways, to live in houses, to farm individual plots of land, to drink and to pray to christian spirits. What became clear in this exhibit is that it didn't entirely work. These people adapted, retaining what they could of their former lives. Nothing else summed this up for me like this piece: ancient beading techniques redirected to embellish that most American of items, a baseball cap.

Finally some housekeeping from yesterday that I unaccountably forgot to include due to a great sleepiness. Yesterday's best place name was Chugwater, WY. Today's was Meeteetse, WY, but only because I couldn't read it without thinking 'Me Tipsy'. The Licence Plate Game went very well but listing states is tedious - much easier to quickly colour in a map: yesterday's haul is in red, today's in blue. You are welcome.