What Makes a Hero?
— Buffalo Bill Cody died at the home of his sister May in Denver, Colorado, on January 10, 1917. Newspaper headlines proclaimed “the end of an era.” Telegrams poured in from President Woodrow Wilson and other political leaders, from generals, from Indian chiefs, from educators, from people in all walks of life. It was said that he had been the most famous American in the world. But fame is not necessarily the mark or the reward of a hero. Europeans called Buffalo Bill a “nature’s nobleman.” That is, he was born in the wilderness, yet carried himself as a gentleman. He spoke with eloquence and dealt with all classes and kinds of people with grace and generosity. But “gentleman,” as his boyhood experiences taught him, was a matter of behavior, not status. He had learned to treat everyone he met with dignity and respect, to listen to them with sympathy, and to put the people around him at ease. Annie Oakley wrote that Buffalo Bill was “the simplest of men,” as comfortable with cowboys as
