The Glasgow Ghost Shirt - viii

 

As impossible as it may seem, at much the same time the Seventh Calvary was killing men, women and children along the Wounded Knee, a buckskin frontiersman, Civil War hero, Pony Express rider (or so he claimed), and hero of a dozen or more dime novels, William F. Cody, was creating and staging “wild west” shows throughout the country. It would not be exaggeration to say Cody was, in his day, the best known American anywhere, certainly the most famous entertainer.

Buffalo Bill was only part charlatan. For several years running, he acted the parts he played once the seasons turned. In summer, he would head out west to the Dakota territories and beyond, where he’d work as a guide for the U. S. Cavalry, in part because, by reputation at least, his ability to get along with Indians was unmatched by any white man.

For the rest of the year, Cody hit the road with a Wild West extravaganza. To call those productions immense, understates things by a country mile. In 1899, to transport the show, its people and its apparatus, from one venue to the next required two entire trains. And move they did: that year Cody and his huge cast did 341 performances in 132 towns, while covering 11,000 miles. The 1887 European trip took along 180 horses, 18 buffalo, 10 elk, 10 mules, 5 Texas steers and the old Deadwood stagecoach. 

The “show” was exactly that. Once the company arrived, they’d put together a parade—Cody may well have been America’s first real marketing genius. Whenever possible, and even when it wasn’t, his massive company would stage two performances of a grand and gaudy frontier variety show, outdoors, seating for 20,000 ticket-purchasing customers on mobile grandstands they took right with them, venue to venue.

As many as 500 people played a role in the production, 25 cowboys, twelve cowgirls, somewhere close to 100 Native people, most of them Lakota, men and women and children. The logistics are mind-boggling; keeping all those people, paying them salaries, doing the advertising—Buffalo Bill’s travelling shows were epics. Some say their European audiences were as taken by the way the whole event managed as they were with the production itself.

The 1887 tour did one not-to-be-forgotten performance for a crowd of only 26 people, even though the venue held 40,000. It was a command performance for Queen Victoria, [6-the Queen] who hadn’t had a presence in public since the death of her husband. Historians believe that the Prince of Wales, immensely taken with Buffalo Bill’s show, encouraged his mother to see it. She suggested a single performance for herself and her court. What Queen Victoria wrote in her diary that night clearly describes her appreciation of what she’d witnessed.

Wild painted Red Indians from America, on their wild bare backed horses, of different tribes—cowboys, Mexicans &c., all came tearing around at full speed, shrieking and screaming, which had the weirdest effect. An attack on a coach & on a ranch, with an immense deal of firing, was most exciting, so was the buffalo hunt & the bucking ponies. . . .The cowboys are fine looking people, but the painted Indians, with their feathers and wild dress (very little of it) were rather alarming looking & they have cruel faces. . . .Col. Cody, ‘Buffalo Bill’ as he is called, from having killed 3000 buffaloes, with his own hand, is a splendid man, handsome and gentlemanlike in manner. He has had many encounters & hand to hand fights with the Red Indians. Their war dances, to a wild drum and pipe, was quite fearful, with all their contorsions [sic] and shrieks, & they come so close.

When it was over, she asked to meet the Indians particularly, among them, who remembered shaking the queen’s hand, something no common English folk would have even thought of doing. 

Black Elk

Queen Victoria was taken, but so was Black Elk, who, with the others, called the Queen “Grandmother,” since she was the woman who ruled in Canada, where so many Lakota had sought safety after Little Big Horn. “We liked Grandmother England, because we could see that she was a fine woman, and she was good to us,” he says in Black Elk Speaks. “Maybe if she had been our Grandmother, it would have been better for our people.”

In 1890, the action overflow crowds were naively applauding was still occurring thousands of miles away. That season, a Lakota headman named Standing Bear hired himself into Cody’s performing company along with a crowd of other Native people (many of them Lakota, from Pine Ridge). Standing Bear and the others crossed an ocean they found so fearful that heavy waters prompted many to sing their own death songs. Standing Bear was touring throughout Europe on December 30, putting on shows when his wife and infant son, who were part of Big Foot’s band, were among those found murdered at Wounded Knee.