In December 1869, "Buffalo Bill, King of the Border Men" debuted as a serial in Street and Smith's New York Weekly. Written by the American adventurer Edward Judson under the pen name Ned Buntline, the stories featured the colorful exploits of William Cody (1846-1917), the famed Western scout, buffalo hunter and showman nicknamed "Buffalo Bill."
This cover from Beadle's Boy's Library shows a dashing and fearless young Cody confidently astride a raging bull. The scout's popularity was based on romanticized notions of his character and greatly embellished accounts of his exploits. Countless dime novel stories appeared about Cody and other famed frontier scouts during the 1860s-1880s, a period when whites settled the West in record numbers and came into increasing conflict with indigenous Native Americans tribes. Such stories provided a means by which pressing moral dilemmas could be played out and brought to successful conclusions that affirmed the values of an increasingly urban, industrialist society.