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==Introduction==
==Introduction==
Often central to the popular image of the [[American West]] are [[American Indians]], specifically northern [[Great Plains]] tribes popularly characterized as dwelling in [[tipis]], skilled in horseback riding, and hunters of [[bison]]. The shaping of the western myth was aided in part through the [[Wild West Shows]] of [[Buffalo Bill|William Frederick Cody]], whose show toured the [[United States]] and [[Europe]] between 1883 and 1917. [[Native Americans in the United States|Native Americans]] were hired from the earliest stages of the show, first drawn from [[Pawnee people|Pawnee]] and then [[Lakota people|Lakota]]. For many Indians who chose to offer their services to the show, the performances were a method of preserving cultural practices in a time when the [[Bureau of Indian Affairs|Office of Indian Affairs]] was intent on promoting [[Americanization (of Native Americans)|Native assimilation]].
Often central to the popular image of the [[American West]] are [[American Indians]], specifically northern [[Great Plains]] tribes popularly characterized as dwelling in [[tipis]], skilled in horseback riding, and hunters of [[bison]]. The shaping of the western myth was aided in part through the [[Wild West Shows]] of [[Buffalo Bill|William Frederick Cody]], whose show toured the [[United States]] and [[Europe]] between 1883 and 1917. [[Native Americans in the United States|Native Americans]] were hired from the earliest stages of the show, first drawn from [[Pawnee people|Pawnee]] and then [[Lakota people|Lakota]]. [[Wagluhe]] [[U.S. Army Indian Scouts]] were a “band of brothers” with [http://www.us7thcavcof.com/Scouts.html U.S. Army Cavalry Scouts] and later were the first [[Oglala Lakota]] to travel with [[Buffalo Bill|Col. William Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody]] and his [[Buffalo Bill|Wild West]] throughout the U.S. and Europe. For many Indians who chose to offer their services to the show, the performances were a method of preserving cultural practices in a time when the [[Bureau of Indian Affairs|Office of Indian Affairs]] was intent on promoting [[Americanization (of Native Americans)|Native assimilation]].


===Terminology===
===Terminology===

Revision as of 13:27, 30 August 2012

Show Indians were Native American performers hired by Wild West Shows, most notably in Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders. The Show Indians were primarily Lakota from the Pine Ridge Agency in South Dakota. Performers took part in reenacting historic battles, demonstrations of equestrianism, and performing ceremonial dances for audiences.

Introduction

Often central to the popular image of the American West are American Indians, specifically northern Great Plains tribes popularly characterized as dwelling in tipis, skilled in horseback riding, and hunters of bison. The shaping of the western myth was aided in part through the Wild West Shows of William Frederick Cody, whose show toured the United States and Europe between 1883 and 1917. Native Americans were hired from the earliest stages of the show, first drawn from Pawnee and then Lakota. Wagluhe U.S. Army Indian Scouts were a “band of brothers” with U.S. Army Cavalry Scouts and later were the first Oglala Lakota to travel with Col. William Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody and his Wild West throughout the U.S. and Europe. For many Indians who chose to offer their services to the show, the performances were a method of preserving cultural practices in a time when the Office of Indian Affairs was intent on promoting Native assimilation.

Terminology

The phrase "Show Indians" likely originated among newspaper reporters and editorial writers as early as 1891. By 1893 the term appears frequently in Bureau of Indian Affairs correspondence. Bureau personnel refer to Indians employed in Wild West Shows and other exhibitions using the phrase "Show Indian," thereby indicating a form of professional status.[1] There has been some objection to the usage of the terms "Indian" and "American Indian", but both terms are still used widely today and no longer considered exonyms.[2]

Hiring practices

Buffalo Bill Cody and Sitting Bull.

Hundreds of Native Americans would serve the show between 1883 and 1917. Performers were hired per season and were paid for their time with the show. Recruiting would happen in Rushville, Nebraska, just across the South Dakota-Nebraska border from Pine Ridge Agency. Indians were central to the Wild West show from the very beginning. The first 1883 show in Omaha, Nebraska, six of the twelve performances, including the opening parade, had Indian performances. The earliest performers were Pawnee from Indian Territory and were used in the show between 1883 and 1885.

Colonel Cody shifted his hiring to Pine Ridge Agency in 1885 after hiring the famous Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux, Sitting Bull. Sitting Bull carried a reputation as the killer of George Armstrong Custer at Little Big Horn and as the last Native American to surrender to the government during the Indian Wars. He joined the show in Buffalo, New York, on June 12, 1885. Although he only toured for one season, Sitting Bull set the course for all subsequent Show Indian employment.[3] His employment represented a shift to Lakota as the preferred Show Indian. The reputation of the Sioux as warriors confirmed the image of Indians held in American and European minds. The use of Native performers in the Wild West Shows as opposed to surrogates reflected the broad interest in Native peoples within American culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.[4]

Types of performances

Show Indians contributed several performances to the Wild West shows. They showcased equestrianism, demonstrated their skills with bows and arrows, and their artistry in dance. The most memorable performances were the historical reenactments in which performers recreated events in the recent past. Shows included Indian attacks on settlers' cabins, stagecoaches, pony-express riders, and wagon trains. Originating with Buffalo Bill, the shows also reenacted the Battle of Little Big Horn and the death of George Armstrong Custer between 1885 and 1898 and would also reenact Wounded Knee after the tragedy in 1890.[5] The performances provided Native Americans an avenue to continue participating in cultural practices deemed illegal on Indian reservations. Vine Deloria, Jr. notes that Buffalo Bill and the first generation of Show Indians spent their time "playing" Indian as a form of refusal to abandon their culture. "Perhaps they realized in the deepest sense, that even a caricature of their youth was preferable to a complete surrender to the homogenization that was overtaking American society," he wrote.[6] The Wild West shows provided a space to be Indian and remain free of harassment from missionaries, teachers, agents, humanitarians, and politicians over the course of fifty years.[7]

Conflict over hiring Native Americans

Wild West Show contract of Philip Blue Shield, 1906.

Protectionist groups such as the Indian Rights Association as well as the Bureau of Indian Affairs criticized the hiring of Native American performers on several grounds. Advocacy groups argued that a horrifying number of Indians died while employed by shows and alleged mistreatment and exploitation on the behalf of Wild West Show promoters.[8] Reformers insisted that the supposed savagery of Native Americans needed to undergo the effects of civilization through land ownership, education, and industry. The logic of the reformers insisted that once Indians adopted new lifestyles they would progress to a level approximating civilization.[9]

The Bureau of Indian Affairs, on the other hand, worried about the shows' effect on its assimilation policies. The battles between the government and Show promoters was over whose image of American Indians would prevail.[10] In 1886, the Bureau of Indian Affairs began regulating the hiring of Native American performers in the shows and by 1889 required Indians to sign individual contracts with the shows under the supervision of Indian agents. Only after fulfilling the new stipulations of the Bureau of Indian Affairs would the Indian commissioner grant Indians permission to leave the reservation. The employment of Indians to unauthorized shows was particularly worrisome for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, who feared having Indians under the employ of a show without the guarantee of care and protection that could lead to degrading employee health and morals.[11]

The Bureau of Indian Affairs under Thomas Jefferson Morgan, who became commissioner in the summer of 1889, was especially critical of Indian employment in Wild West shows. Although he could do little about the contracts already signed, he attacked in public and in print the seeming failures of the shows to meet the obligations of the contracts. When reviewing contracts he often turned them down or stipulated provisions shows could not meet, in effect preventing Indians from joining shows. Morgan also threatened aspiring Indian performers by withholding land allotments, annuities, and tribal status and also threatened show promoters with the loss of their bonds if they neglected to uphold their contractual obligations. The only acceptable outcome for Morgan was for Indians to quit the shows.[12]

In 1890, No Neck and Black Heart testified in an inquiry before the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The hearing weighed on the morality of Indian employment in show business. “You are engaged in the exhibition or show business,” observed acting Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, A.C. Belt. “It is not considered among white people a very helpful or elevating business. I believe that which is not good for the for the white people is not good for the Indians, and what is bad for the white people is bad for the Indians.” “The Indians defended their work as adamantly as any white performer, and they turned the inquiry into a pointed denunciation of the Indian policy by comparing conditions in the show with those of the Pine Ridge Agency, South Dakota. The contrast reflected poorly on the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Rocky Bear began by pointing out that he long had served the interests of the federal government, or the “Great Father,” by encouraging the development of reservation agencies. He worked in a show that fed him well, “that is why I am getting so fat,” he said, stroking his cheeks. It was only in returning to the reservation that “I am getting poor.” If the Great Father wanted him to stop appearing in the show, he would stop. But until then, “that is the way I get money.” When he showed his inquisitors a purse filled with $300 in gold coins, ”I saved this money to buy some clothes for my children” they were silenced. Black Heart, too, denounced the allegations of mistreatment. “We were raised on horseback; that is the way we had to work.” Buffalo Bill Cody and Nate Salsbury “furnished us the same work we were raised to; that is the reason we want to work these kind of men.”[13]

Travel abroad

In addition to performing throughout the United States, Show Indians toured Europe. The first international trip was to London, England, on March 31, 1887. On the steam ship State of Nebraska, the show's entourage included eighty-three saloon passengers, thirty-eight steerage passengers, ninety-seven Indians, eighteen buffaloes, two deer, ten elk, ten mules, five Texas steers, four donkeys, and one-hundred and eight horses.[14] The show was part of the celebration of the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria and toured through Birmingham, Salford, and London for five months. The show returned to Europe in 1889-1890 where it visited England, France, Italy, and Germany.

World's Fairs and expositions

In 1893 at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, William F. Cody and other Wild West show promoters brought their show to the fair. The Bureau of Indian Affairs agreed to sponsor and supervise the Columbian Exposition's American Indian Exhibit, which included a model Indian school and an Indian encampment. Financial difficulties, however, led the Bureau of Indian Affairs to withdraw its sponsorship and left the ethnological exhibit under the directorship of Frederick W. Putnam of Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.[15] Despite being denied a place in the World's Fair, William F. Cody established a fourteen-acre swath of land near the main entrance of the fair for "Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World," where he erected stands around an arena large enough to seat eighteen thousand spectators. Seventy-four Indians from Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, who had recently returned from a tour of Europe, were contracted to perform in the show. Cody brought in an additional one hundred Lakota from Pine Ridge, Standing Rock, and Rosebud reservations, who visited the fair at his expense and participated in the opening ceremonies.[16] Over two million patrons saw Buffalo Bill's show in Chicago, often mistaking the show as an integral part to the World's Fair.[17]

Portrayal of Indians and the mythic West

The popular image of Indians as living in tribes, sleeping in tipis, wearing feather headdresses, being equestrian, and hunting bison was fueled by the Great Plains serving as the principal source of Indian performers.[18][19] The popular perception of the Sioux as the distinctive American Indian first emerged with early dime novel writers, then the Wild West Shows maintained that image and its persistence through film, radio, and television westerns. Historian Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr. called the Wild West shows "dime novels come alive."[20]

The Wild West Shows intended to celebrate American progress and technology by demonstrating the superiority of American history and society. The American West served as a formative characteristic in American exceptionalism. The frontier, according to Frederick Jackson Turner's famous thesis, was "breaking the average bond of custom, offering new experiences, [and] calling out new institutions and activities" that forged a unique American character rooted in individualism, self-sufficiency, and democratic institutions.[21] Nate Salsbury, Cody's partner in the Wild West Show, argued that the performances were accurate reflections of frontier life and viewed the show as a national narrative that represented the "true" West. Joy Kasson notes that "in a manner that has become familiar in the age of electronic popular culture, an entertainment spectacle was taken for 'the real thing,' and showmanship became inextricably entwined with its ostensible subject. Buffalo Bill's Wild West became America's Wild West."[22] In Colonel Cody's story of the West, Native Americans played a central role.

Famous Show Indians

See also

References

  • Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show and Exhibition.” Spring 2000. Bowling Green State University. 29 November 2005. <http://www.bgsu.edu/departments/acs/1890s/buffalobill/bbwildwestshow.html>.
  • Deahl, William E. "Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in New Orleans." Louisiana History (Summer 1975): 289-298.
  • Fent, Cindy and Raymond Wilson. "Indians Off Track: Cody's Wild West and the Melrose Park Train Wreck of 1904." American Indian Culture and Research Journal (1994): 235-249.
  • Heppler, Jason. "Buffalo Bill's Wild West and the Progressive Image of American Indians," digital history <http://segonku.unl.edu/~jheppler/showindian/>.
  • Kasson, Joy S. Buffalo Bill's Wild West: Celebrity, Memory, and Popular History. New York: Hill and Wang, 2000.
  • Kilpatrick, Jacquelyn. Celluloid Indians: Native Americans and Film (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999).
  • Maddra, Sam. Hostiles? The Lakota Ghost Dance and Buffalo Bill's Wild West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006).
  • McMurtry, Larry. The Colonel and Little Missie: Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, and the Beginnings of Superstardom in America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005).
  • Moses, L. G. "Indians on the Midway: Wild West Shows and the Indian Bureau at World's Fairs, 1893-1904." South Dakota History (Fall 1991): 205-229.
  • Moses, L. G. Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians, 1833-1933. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996.
  • Reddin, Paul. Wild West Shows (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999).
  • Saum, Lewis O. "'Astonishing the Natives': Bringing the Wild Wild West to Los Angeles." Montana Magazine of Western History (Summer 1988): 2-13.
  • Trennert, Robert A. "Selling Indian Education at World's Fairs and Expositions, 1893-1904." American Indian Quarterly (Summer 1987): 203-220.
  • Warren, Louis S. Buffalo Bill's America: William Cody and the Wild West Show. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.

Notes

  1. ^ L. G. Moses, "Indians on the Midway: Wild West Shows and the Indian Bureau at World's Fairs, 1893-1904," South Dakota History (Fall 1991): 219.
  2. ^ See generally, Native American name controversy. In 1968, the American Indian Movement was founded. In 1977, a delegation from the International Indian Treaty Council, an arm of AIM, elected to collectively identify as "American Indian," at the United Nations Conference on Indians in the Americas at Geneva, Switzerland. Some activists and public figures of indigenous descent, such as Russell Means, say that they prefer "American Indian" to the more recently adopted "Native American." Dennis Gaffney (2006). ""American Indian" or "Native American": Which Is Correct?". PBS. Retrieved 2007-10-17 and "Indian Eristic". Wisconsin Office of State Employment Relations. January 5, 2007. Retrieved 2007-10-17.
  3. ^ Joy Kasson, Buffalo Bill's Wild West: Celebrity, Memory, and Popular History (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000), 169-183.
  4. ^ L.G. Moses, Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians, 1883-1933 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), 2-5.
  5. ^ L. G. Moses, "Indians on the Midway: Wild West Shows and the Indian Bureau at World's Fairs, 1893-1904," South Dakota History (Fall 1991): 207.
  6. ^ Vine Deloria, "The Indians," 56.
  7. ^ L.G. Moses, Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians, 1883-1933 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), 277.
  8. ^ Cindy Fent and Raymond Wilson, "Indians Off Track: Cody's Wild West and the Melrose Park Train Wreck of 1904," American Indian Culture and Research Journal, vol. 18, no. 3 (1994): 235-249.
  9. ^ Robert A. Trennert Jr., "Selling Indian Education at World's Fairs and Expositions, 1893-1904," American Indian Quarterly, vol. 11, no. 3 (Summer 1987): 203-220.
  10. ^ L.G. Moses, Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians, 1883-1933 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), 5.
  11. ^ L.G. Moses, Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians, 1883-1933 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), 70-71.
  12. ^ L.G. Moses, Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians, 1883-1933 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), 73-79.
  13. ^ Buffalo Bill's America: William Cody and the Wild West Show  By Louis S. Warren, at 372 (2005)
  14. ^ L.G. Moses, Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians, 1883-1933 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), 42.
  15. ^ Robert A. Trennert, Jr., "Selling Indian Education at World's Fairs and Expositions, 1893-1904," American Indian Quarterly (Summer 1987): 204-207.
  16. ^ # Moses, L. G. "Indians on the Midway: Wild West Shows and the Indian Bureau at World's Fairs, 1893-1904." South Dakota History (Fall 1991): 210-215.
  17. ^ L.G. Moses, Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians, 1883-1933 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), 137.
  18. ^ L.G. Moses, Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians, 1883-1933 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996).
  19. ^ Brian W. Dippie, The Vanishing American: White Attitudes and U.S. Indian Policy (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1982).
  20. ^ Robert F. Berkhofer Jr., The White Man's Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present (New York: Knopf, 1978), 100.
  21. ^ Frederick Jackson Turner, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History."
  22. ^ Joy Kasson, Buffalo Bill's Wild West: Celebrity, Memory, and Popular History (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000), 15.
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