This early western exhibition broadside is a very early piece of St. Louis printing. The place and date of the exhibition are filled in in manuscript which states that the exhibition will be held at the stable of "Mr. Samuel Palmer in West Springfield on the 8th day of Inst. February 1816. West Springfield, Missouri, may not exist today but it was once a post-office in Shelby County, and once the site of a buffalo exhibition. The description below the buffalo reads: "This interesting animal was caught about Two Hundred miles above the Lead Mines, on the Missouri River. It is a female; is two years old, and is as large as a common sized Ox."
Possibly printed by Joseph Charless, the first printer west of the Mississippi, who set up shop in St. Louis in 1808.
