Salsbury, Nate

(1846-1902)

   Born Nathan Salsbury in Illinois, he became an actor, playwright, and manager after service in the United States Army during the Civil War . Following the war, he acted with stock companies before finding success in 1875 when he founded Salsbury's Troubadors, a five-man comedy troupe, for whom he wrote farces, including The Brook (1875). He gained fame in 1883 as general manager of William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody's Wild West show, a position he retained for the rest of his life. Sals-bury was instrumental in adding sharpshooter Annie Oakley and Chief Sitting Bull to the company and planning international tours. One digression from the Wild West Show was Black America (1895), a mammoth production in which 300 black performers appeared in scenes depicting African American life, but despite Salsbury's producing skills it was a short-lived failure. Salsbury is immortalized in the character of "Charlie Davenport" in the 1946 Irving Berlin musical, Annie Get Your Gun, and he was the father of artist Rebecca Salsbury James.

   See also Frontier drama.