There were no hunting limits at the time. According to “The Story of American Hunting and Firearms” in Outdoor Life magazine, there was so much game that anyone with a muzzle-loader could kill two or three thousand prairie chickens a year for the market. Around the Great Lakes, it was not uncommon for a hunter to kill 150 to 200 white-tailed deer in one autumn, and receive $15 or $20 per deer. It was good money, more than the average lumberjack, farmer, or miner could earn in one year. Many years after Annie had become famous, Charles Katzenberger showed her his old account books, which listed the amount of game he had bought from her. “I won’t say how much,” she said, “as I might be classed as a game hog, but any man who has ever tried to make a living and raise a family on 27 acres of poor land will readily understand that it was a hard proposition.” In 1891, a retrospective of Annie’s career in The Guardian reported that by the time she was in her late teens, she had shot so much game and won so many turkey shoots that she was barred from entering them.
In 1881, Frank Butler arrived in Greenville with some friends for a shooting match. They were on a nationwide circuit of contests. “I got there late,” he later told a reporter, “and found the whole town, in fact, most of the county out ready to bet me or any of my friends to a standstill on their ‘unknown.’ I did not bet a cent. You may bet, however, that I almost dropped dead when a little girl in short dresses stepped out to the mark with me.” It was Annie. “I was a beaten man,” he continued, “for I was taken off guard. Never were the birds so hard for two shooters as they flew from us, but never did a person make more impossible shots than did that little girl. She killed 23 and I killed 21. It was her first big match—my first defeat.”
It was the beginning of a lifelong love affair and partnership. Before he left town, Frank invited Annie to a theater to see his act. Among other things, it involved Frank shooting an apple off the head of his poodle, George. George then picked up a piece of apple and laid it at Annie’s feet. When Frank left to join the circus, he continued courting her, via letters from George, a box of candy from George, and finally a poem from Frank, called “Little Raindrops.”
There’s a charming little girl
She’s many miles from here
She’s a loving little fairy
You’d fall in love to see her
Her presence would remind you
Of an angel in the skies,
And you bet I love this little girl
With the rain drops in her eyes.
The pair married in 1881 or 2; the record is vague, due to a first marriage of Frank’s that may or may not have been legally dissolved when they appeared as husband and wife. At the time, Frank was traveling with the Sells Brothers Circus, along with his partner, John Graham. They had a shooting act known as “America’s own rifle team and champion all around shots.” They dressed like dandies, in tall black boots, tight pants, and coats with tails. They shot an apple off each other’s head. Frank would fire while bending over backward, and John shot with his rifle upside down between his legs. Around 1882 or 3, Annie left Ohio and joined the men on tour. One day when John became ill, Frank asked Annie to hold objects while he shot. It was his custom to miss the first couple of shots, and then hit the mark. But on this day, he kept missing. Finally a spectator staggered to the ring. “Let the girl shoot,” he said, pointing at Annie. Annie hadn’t practiced that particular shot. But she picked up a gun, fired, and hit the target on her second try. “The crowd went into an uproar,” Frank said, “and when I attempted to resume my act I was howled down.” He made Annie his new partner, and around that time she began calling herself “Annie Oakley,” after the town where she and Frank had the shooting match. But according to Sitting Bull’s great grandson, the name was mistranslated. Its meaning was actually “Little Person Who Does Good Things.” As often happened, the first translation stuck, and it is as “Little Sure Shot” or “Little Miss Sure Shot” that Annie became known (though to Cody, she was “Little Missie”)—and in any case, it was Sitting Bull who described her thusly.
It was an inspired “brand,” in today’s vernacular, and it certainly helped Annie along her road. Would she have attained stardom without that billing? It’s hard to say, but Sitting Bull had zeroed in on something that was very American: when it came to guns, she did not hesitate. She fired and her aim was true and people went oooh and aaah and wanted more. For her, shooting was an act of defiance; in taking on the challenge of hitting difficult marks, she was rising to an occasion. It was also an act of assertion, for in pulling the trigger, there was no going back, and in that moment, in the intersection of that latitude and longitude, was her glory. With that nickname and those characteristics, Little Miss Sure Shot was bound to be a superstar, for it is inside the act of pulling the trigger that America resides. Mysterious are the forces that lead us to one another, at certain times, for certain reasons, and looking back on that era, it would seem that Sitting Bull’s meeting with Annie Oakley in St. Paul was written on the winds, for without that nickname she would have been billed differently, and quite possibly different things would have happened. After receiving the name and Sitting Bull’s friendship, all she needed was one more turn of the wheel.
It happened later that year. While traveling with Frank in the Sells Brothers Circus, the pair arrived in New Orleans. It rained throughout December, and the circus was closed after two weeks. Annie and Frank were jobless, although due to start again with the circus, but not until April, when Annie’s salary would be increased. Stranded in Louisiana, they were looking for work until springtime. Meanwhile, William Cody and his Wild West show had arrived, just as the Sells Circus was closing. Sometime during mid-December, Cody headed to the Sells lot and met Annie and Frank. They asked for a job, and Cody turned them down, explaining that his show was heavy on shooting acts, including the famous Captain Bogardus and his four sons. Annie and Frank went north for the winter, playing theaters in other cities.
Cody opened in New Orleans, but was nearly destroyed by the aforementioned flood, trying to reorganize after the sinking of his steamship and loss of animals and equipment. Captain Bogardus lost his guns and quit the show, taking his sons with him. Word traveled quickly on the shooting circuit, and Annie immediately wrote to Cody, again asking for a job. “At first,” Annie later recalled, “Colonel Cody entertained a grave doubt as to whether I”—a woman of 110 pounds—“could withstand the recoil from a shot-gun.” To prove that she could equal Bogardus and his shooting, she agreed to a three-day trial. If Cody wasn’t happy, she would leave the show, and that would be that. Her performance pleased Cody, and in 1885, she and Frank joined the Wild West in Louisville, Kentucky. Annie, now twenty-five and a solo act, opened the new season in April, smashing glass balls and clay pigeons on the wing Bogardus-style, but with her own flair, and of course, as a woman—the only white female member of the show. “Little Miss Sure Shot” had taken the stage.
With Buffalo Bill, she and Sitting Bull were a trio of misunderstood souls. In an era during which people spoke not of their hardships and reporters who recounted their lives thought not to ask, such a thing was hardly expressed and given the circumstances of their lives, we can imagine how deeply their experiences reverberated and were channeled into their time together in the Wild West.
They were projection screens after all, revered for their warrior ways, aspects both real and imagined, their hunting and shooting prowess, the way they sat on a horse, greeted a crowd, fired a rifle, scalped an opponent. Together they represented an America that all knew but few had witnessed—they were survivors who had lived through shock and awe to show you what happened. Together they shared the truth of America and they alone knew it, along with the cast of the Wild West, and without the show, they might have followed the path of their contemporaries who were not cast members—players in lesser shows or drunks in alleys, ordinary people leading ordinary lives, farmers or settlers or miners, cast-offs confined to reservations or a vanishing frontier, never to shou
t, holler, or ride again.
On the day of his arrival, the Buffalo Courier reported that Sitting Bull waited in his carriage in the afternoon sun “with characteristic Indian patience,” watching the day’s acts. He may have been heartened to see Annie Oakley displaying her shooting skills, to the thunderous applause of twelve thousand spectators. Finally, word came that Buffalo Bill was ready to meet him. He indicated assent and the carriage moved along the track toward the grandstand. People spotted Sitting Bull and began cheering loudly. Suddenly the carriage was stopped. Up the track, standing motionless, was Cody. Major Burke stepped down from the carriage, followed by Sitting Bull, his interpreter, and a reporter. Major Burke approached Bill, and heartily shook his hand. “I am here, governor,” he said. “I’ve got him. Come and shake hands. He’s a fine fellow. See, he is coming.” Cody hesitated and step forward briefly. So did Tatanka Iyotake. There was a strange pause, according to the Courier, and then “the famous redskin and the equally noted white hunter, pressed by the interpreter and Major Burke, advanced, and Buffalo Bill, drawing himself up and assuming a very striking and really handsome pose, held out his hand.” They grasped hands and eyed each other for several seconds, with the Indians, cowboys, and Mexicans of the Wild West lined up along a fence and looking on. So too were spectators watching from carriages and the grandstand, “with breathless interest,” as “the novel interview” unfolded.
Their grasp continued and became more forthright, “and both seemed to say to the other, ‘I can trust you.’ ” Major Burke then pointed to Cody and said, in Lakota, “Ea ton she Weechaka To kia,” which meant, “This is the white chief.” Then, gesturing to Sitting Bull, he said, “Dakota Weechiata ta-tape,” which meant, “The Great Dakota Sioux King.” Sitting Bull tried to smile and he looked at the throngs around him. Buffalo Bill was momentarily disconcerted, but with “vigorous effort, he straightened himself up to his full height.” Then he turned toward the concourse in the grandstand and addressed the crowd.
Ladies and gentlemen of Buffalo. To me this hour is a most peculiar one, as on your beautiful fairgrounds, I meet a warrior whom I [once] attacked [along with] the active army forces of the government, fought a personal conflict with in the campaign of 1876, but he evaded us most successfully. Without egotism I can point with pride to my own record, if you will excuse the use of the only phrase I know to explain it as an Indian fighter; but though I have never been insensitive to the abstract [notion of] civilization, as our progress is called . . . [I think of myself as] the red man’s friend. . . . The man who stands before you today is a great warrior; his deeds, divested of our personal feelings to the victims of his success, occupy the blood-red pages of the nation’s history. He, from his standpoint, fought for what he believed was right, and made a name for himself to be known forever. The man I now introduce to you is Sitting Bull, the Napoleon of the red race, who has journeyed thousands of miles to be present with us today.
There is no description of the crowd’s reaction to this speech, and we do not know if it was rehearsed. But from Cody’s body language upon his meeting with Sitting Bull, we can guess that he was shaken and humbled—after all, he had to pull himself up to his normal height after being initially reduced—and that in this moment, and the physical shaking of hands, and the general sizing up of a person that happens quickly as many things transpire—the exchange of scent and other less obvious signs—an understanding was hatched, a communication between the men was passed, regardless of Cody’s words, which were remarkable unto themselves.
After the speech, Buffalo Bill and Sitting Bull got into a carriage and were taken to a clubhouse, where they were joined by Sitting Bull’s party. They rested for a while, “partaking of modest refreshments in the form of pop and sandwiches,” and then they adjourned to camp, where a hearty dinner was served. Sitting Bull ate moderately, but Crow Eagle, Crow’s Ghost, and Iron Thunder “disposed of truly enormous quantities of broiled steak, potatoes, coffee and bread.” Then there was a meeting between the newly arrived Sioux and the Pawnees and other Indians in camp. At first, there seemed to be some sort of hesitancy or jealousy (and later the Lakota became the preferred members of the Wild West), but this soon wore off. “Sitting Bull was the recipient of a large amount of hero worship from those of his own race,” said the Courier. “After passing round the calumet of peace, the whole party went to the sleeping tent provided for them and usually occupied by Buffalo Bill and his aides.”
They settled down, and then “the victor of the Little Bighorn” reclined on a couch of blankets, without his war bonnet and tunic, wearing a “boiled shirt of civilization”—meaning it was formal and starched—“and his buckskin pantaloons, quietly smoking a good cigar given him by Major Burke and listening to the talk of old John Nelson, who speaks Sioux fluently, and who has passed nearly half a century among the redskins.” The next day, Sitting Bull would join Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley and the cast of the Wild West in the arena.
CHAPTER SIX
In Which an Indian and a Wasichu Certify Their Alliance Across the Medicine Line
A new passion play was unfolding, with touchstone moments for a burgeoning nation reenacted shortly after they had occurred. The moments were violent and involved guns and hatchets, and in the end there were heroes and villains and everyone wanted to meet them. And so they converged in giant outdoor arenas in Buffalo, Burlington, Boston, Philadelphia, Saginaw, Columbus, and beyond, witnessing the national birth time and time again as a cowboy band played on, choir to the sacred rite. “Westward the Course of Empire Makes Its Way” proclaimed a mural at the U.S. Capitol, a twenty-foot-long celebration of pioneers and covered wagons at the Continental Divide, all facing a setting sun above the Pacific Ocean as a pilgrim atop a peak pointed the way, surrounded by images of Moses and the Israelites and Lewis and Clark—prophets all, now merged in the name of fate in a new world. It is said that the name of this painting had great meaning for William Cody; it was oft repeated at the time, a solitary line from an influential poem of the era, “Verses on the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America.” He well may have seen the mural during one of his visits to Congress, and even if not, its images and sentiment were brought to life in his grand rite and spectacle. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West—“Larger and Greater than Ever” with the addition of “the renowned Sioux Chief, Sitting Bull,” his name in ads only slightly smaller than the name of the show itself—came to celebrate and teach, and the lesson had a cast of all-stars and lesser icons and animals and it even featured a “literature wagon” on the premises, selling all manner of the psalms and scriptures and fables that comprised the show. Everywhere you looked there was myth and story, and even as you picked up a dime novel about Buffalo Bill or an account of the Little Bighorn, the immortals were right there before you, in full dress and war paint, right out of another dimension.
Why, Sitting Bull even had his own staff! as newspaper ads announced with a touch of whimsy in advance of every engagement. It included “White Eagle and 52 braves; the one-legged Sioux spy; Frisking Elk; the great markswoman from the Western border, Miss Annie Oakley; largest herd of buffalo ever exhibited; grand Indian buffalo hunt, known as the Surround; the phenomenal boy shot, Johnny Baker; Mustang Jack, jumping over a horse at 16½ hands; Buck Taylor, the king of the cowboys, in novel equestrianism, lassoing wild cattle, and many others such as a shooting whiz who aimed his weapons at marbles, half dollars and nickels.”
The primary attraction of course was William Cody, who seemed to fulfill a national need for one man to step forward from the stage of Manifest Destiny and own it. Central casting couldn’t have imagined a better actor: he was oh so handsome; his long flowing hair rendered him both rugged and ethereal—a quasi-religious figure with a Winchester, delivering the national dream, galloping out of the magic dust and into the arena, astride a magnificent horse.
True to the spirit of the West, the arena in each town was outside, an outdoor driving park, to be precise—sprawling
raceways built on the outskirts of cities at the end of horse car and rail lines, designed originally for the burgeoning spectator sport of harness racing. The tracks were surrounded by grandstands and private boxes; fans could also align themselves against railings around the racing ovals, or plant themselves on nearby railroad embankments. Over time, the driving parks evolved into fairgrounds, adding stables and corrals and other structures. They became a point of debarkation for Barnum and Bailey circus trains, and when the Wild West came to town, they could easily accommodate the thousands of fans who converged at each show. There was also plenty of atmosphere for a presentation that worked best under a wide-open sky, with its buffalo stampedes, renegade stagecoaches, cowboys leaping atop bucking broncos, and trick shooters firing away at glass balls flying through the air—without the possibility of gunshot sparks starting a fire inside a building or buffalo running into a crowd because there was no escape. It is no wonder that, for instance, in August of 1885, the Toronto Globe reported that the “biggest, wildest, most exciting outdoor show that the city had ever seen” took place at the Woodbine Park and Racetrack with the arrival of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West.
Newspapers across the U.S. deployed similar language to describe what happened whenever Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill were in town. In fact, the multicity tour that they embarked on in the late summer and early fall of 1885 set new records for the Wild West, playing to a million people and earning over $100,000, an amount that more than made up for the losses incurred during the New Orleans flood that literally sank Cody’s show. In today’s parlance, Cody had been convinced that making the A list star Sitting Bull a major attraction would guarantee ongoing success and fascination, and he was right.
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