Golden – Legendary showman Buffalo Bill introduced the Republic of Georgia to the United States through his Wild West Show.
Trick riders from the western Georgian area of Guria on the Black Sea were called Cossacks by Buffalo Bill in his extravaganza that ran 1892-1913.
Irakli Makharadze, a Georgian filmmaker and researcher, discovered through a decade of digging that the trick riders were really peasants, from a tradition of those who rode and fought hard to defend their country over hundreds of years.
“Buffalo Bill was a very clever showman,” said Makharadze, who developed the idea to commemorate the Georgians’ Wild West connection with a recently issued stamp.
Images from historic Wild West Show posters owned by the Buffalo Bill Museum atop Lookout Mountain in Golden were used for the stamp, which costs about 50 cents and will adorn Georgian mail.
Makharadze visited the museum recently for a firsthand look at the posters.
“It’s part of the international appeal of Buffalo Bill,” said museum director Steve Friesen.
Buffalo Bill introduced American Indians to the world, and Friesen said he also gave a global glimpse to Americans in the form of “samurai,” vaqueros, gauchos and Boers in his show.
Friesen said Buffalo Bill, who died in 1917 in Denver and is buried on Lookout Mountain, wasn’t beyond pumping up reality, such as declaring that the show’s ordinary Indians were princes.
Americans were just becoming aware of Cossacks, who had a reputation for fierceness and horsemanship as they fought for the Russian czar, Friesen said, and Buffalo Bill borrowed that.
Makharadze said there is evidence that Buffalo Bill’s agent, an Englishman named Thomas Oliver, who lived for several years in Guria, may have suggested the showman look to Georgia for trick riders.
Some of the Georgians’ riding stunts – hanging on the side of hard-charging horses – still can be found in similar stunts performed by the Westernaires, who call Jefferson County home.
The shared history of Georgia and the United States in the Wild West Show is the subject of a 2002 book by Makharadze.
Most Georgians didn’t know about the role their countrymen – and four countrywomen – had in the Wild West Show, Makharadze said.
He added: “They do now.”
Staff writer Ann Schrader can be reached at 303-278-3217 or aschrader@denverpost.com.
