Annie Oakley

Annie Oakley, legendary sharpshooter and celebrated member of Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, was one of America's first superstars. In the late nineteenth century, her image was known all over the world. She had tea with Queen Victoria, met the Austrian Emperor Franz Josef, and was challenged by Grand Duke Michael of Russia to a shooting match. . . .

Oakley was a natural performer. Modest, yet playful, she skipped onto the stage like a schoolgirl. She shot an apple from Butler's head, pierced the heart in the ace of hearts or, if the card was held sideways, sliced through it; she shot corks from bottles and blew out the flames from candles. She shot backward looking through a small mirror. She could shoot just as well with her left hand as with her right. Sometimes she pretended to miss and pouted, stamping her foot. At the end of her act, she blew kisses to the crowd and did a funny little kick as she disappeared behind the curtain. The audience loved her. . . .

Buffalo Bill's Wild West show made Oakley a star. Although she was from the Midwest, she allowed herself to become an icon of the West. "Her mythology was really about the girl of the golden West," says [professor of history, Virginia] Scharff. "She didn't talk much about her childhood. She was more concerned with creating this myth of the little sure shot, of the perfect, ladylike, small, diminutive, pretty woman who could handle a gun and who could shoot anything. Buffalo Bill loved it. It was sort of like having somebody who embodied all the qualities of femininity and womanhood but also had this great sporting skill and could be an heroic little girl."

^{Source: Kim-Brown, Caroline. ''Little Sure Shot:'' The Saga of Annie Oakley. Humanities, May/June 2006, Volume 27/Number 3. http://www.neh.gov/news/humanities/2006-05/annieoakley.html}