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Louis S. Warren

Page 56

by Buffalo Bill's America: William Cody;the Wild West Show


  Bridging these conflicting viewpoints, and offering a middle ground for any who were uncomfortable choosing one or the other, was an essay on the Ghost Dance by Burke himself. The press agent suggested the tragedy was coda to a conquest that was less than moral, but certainly inevitable. The Indians’ “grand and once happy empire” had now been “brought thoroughly and efficiently under the control of our civilization, or (possibly more candidly confessed) under the Anglo-Saxon’s commercial necessities.” After all, Burke reminded his readers, if “civilization” was the fate of the world, its progress was suspiciously fast where profit margins were greatest. The savagery of Indian warfare, he mused, was of course the fault of Indians. But their fading resistance, “in another cause,” might represent “courage and tenacity as bright as that recorded in the pages dedicated to the heroes of Thermo[p]ylae.”

  The essay appeared with a drawing titled “After the Battle—Field of Wounded Knee—Campaign 1890–91.” Drawn from photographs taken right after the massacre, it depicted dozens of dead Indians and empty, sagging tipis beneath a background of brooding hills. In the distance two soldiers and a scout with a wide hat survey the carnage. Snow lies thick on the fallen.

  Whatever position one took on the event, Burke concluded, “the inevitable law of the survival of the fittest, must ‘bring the flattering unction to the soul’ ” of the Indians who were conquered, and who would eventually “march cheerily to the tune of honest toil, industrious peace, and fireside prosperity.”93 In the end, civilization would embrace Indians, too. However it came, come it must. The show program’s presentation of Wounded Knee reflected all the humanity—and all the self-acquittal—of America’s traditional ambivalence toward Indian conquest. Buffalo Bill was many things, but by the time of Wounded Knee, he scouted mostly the terrain of ambiguity and ambivalence, the only place where mass entertainment could engage the injustice of massacre.

  For Cody himself, the Wounded Knee imbroglio and the haste with which the Indian Service backed away from responsibility for the massacre allowed him to regain official trust in his treatment of Indians. This was a remarkable turnaround from the events of only two months before, when his show was held hostage to Indian Service inquiry. Authorities did not forget about the controversy, however, and they continued to keep close tabs on Indian education in the Wild West show.

  For its part, the army did not manage to wrest authority over Indians away from the Department of the Interior. But they did succeed in placing a military officer in charge of Pine Ridge for at least the next few years. During that time, Cody had no trouble acquiring permission for Indians to leave the reservation with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West. The acting Indian agent, Captain George LeRoy Brown of the U.S. Eleventh Infantry, was a friend of Cody’s, with views on Indian performers that were close to the showman’s:

  Of course you understand that I share the feelings of all Army Officers in [regard] to your show and am very thoroughly convinced of its advantages as an educator for the Indians. It is conceded on all hands that traveling is a good civiliser and educator for white men. After a good many years of experience I fail to see any difference in the fundamental traits of character between an Indian and a white man, and the same causes, seem to me, to produce the same results, without regard to color, and differ only in degree.

  Brown facilitated Cody’s requests and made suggestions about how to circumvent antitheatrical Indian reformers and bureaucrats.94

  Although he did no scouting in 1890, Buffalo Bill provided a symbol of Indian expertise and frontier savvy for an army hoping to recover Indian governance for themselves as the twentieth century approached. In the aftermath of Wounded Knee, the army continued these efforts. Troops marched through the reservations in a show of force, then returned to their posts, armed and waiting. Regular combat forces were stationed at Fort Robinson, on the southern edge of the Pine Ridge reservation, until 1919.95 They had put down the revolt that happened on the Interior Department’s watch, a fact that gave them much credibility on Indian affairs. Cody’s status as their most eminent civilian ally, and as employer of the Ghost Dance evangelists the Indian Service could not contain, would make it extremely difficult for the Indian office to challenge him, for a few years at least.

  Cody owed his comeback to various people and influences: to his connections to the military and his friendship with General Miles, to his ability to maintain his pose as frontier scout without actually shooting at anybody, and to his extremely able publicist, John Burke. But his success in turning the dispute to his favor must be attributed above all to choices that Oglala performers made during the Ghost Dance troubles. The Wild West show’s Indian performers would have suffered most from an official ban on Indian travel with Cody’s show. In this sense, the victory over the Indian Service was at least as much theirs as it was Cody’s. Although they remained silent on their motivations, it is not hard to see how they reinforced their image as “progressive” Indians. Back in Washington, in late 1890, as they rose to leave the inquiry into their treatment in the Wild West show, acting commissioner Belt warned the show Indians that “some little excitement” was “growing out of the religion of your people, who believe in the coming of a new Messiah.” He implored them to “use your influence and your exertions on the side of the Government.”96 Rocky Bear, Black Heart, and the others may have taken Belt’s request as an order. If they feared that joining the Ghost Dance might impede future work with the Wild West show, they were probably correct.

  Back at Pine Ridge, they certainly behaved as if such matters were on their minds. The Lakotas in the Wild West show refused to endorse allotment while they were traveling in 1889, but upon their return in 1890, they overwhelmingly supported the government in its fight against the Ghost Dance. U.S. agents hired dozens of Oglalas to scout for the army and serve as tribal policemen. So many of the show’s Indians were among these that agent Royer, who had been a strong critic of the Wild West show before the troubles, now commended it. The Indians who returned from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show “stood by the government to a man,” wrote Royer. “The great number of them belong to the police and scout force.” John Burke telegraphed news of the alliance between the show’s Indians and government forces during the troubles. Show publicity later extolled it.97

  In fact, not all the men who had been with the Wild West show became government supporters, and at least one fought the army. But even his story suggests how the men and women who survived that killing winter decided to turn away from the Ghost Dance promise and toward the the limited cultural continuity and economic opportunity of the Wild West show.

  Black Elk, who had caught up with Buffalo Bill in Paris after his two-year odyssey in Europe, returned home in 1889 to find his people starving. He became a leading Ghost Dancer. This was a decision he came to regret. When Big Foot and his people fell at Wounded Knee, Black Elk heard the shooting and rode to help the survivors. He had no gun, but charged the scattered troops again and again, driving them before him. He wore his Ghost Dance shirt. No bullets harmed him. With other refugees, he gathered at the stronghold between Manderson and Oglala, until he heard there was peace. Returning to his home at Pine Ridge, he found the people had fled in terror after the massacre, and were now in a fierce skirmish with more U.S. soldiers at nearby Drexel Mission. Black Elk rode into this battle, too, and was shot in the side. An older warrior, Protector, ran up to him and steadied him on his horse. “Let me go, I’ll go over there,” said Black Elk, gesturing toward the troops. “It is a good day to die so I’ll go over there.”

  “No, Nephew,” said Protector, tearing up his blanket and wrapping it around Black Elk’s middle to keep his guts from falling out. Then he told Black Elk to go home. “You must not die today, you must live, for the people depend upon you.”98

  On the other side of this conflict, Rocky Bear, No Neck, Black Heart, and the others did not embrace the government because they thought its Indian policy was fair. To them, there was simply no o
ther choice if the Lakotas were to survive another day. Young-Man-Afraid-of-His-Horses, a great warrior who had been in the Wild West show, and emerged a government supporter and a critic of the Ghost Dance, told Black Elk, “If this were summer I would have joined you and had it to a finish. But this is winter and it is hard on our children especially, so let us go back and make peace.” 99 If most of the men who performed with Buffalo Bill came down on the side of the army, it was because it was a lesser evil in a most evil time.

  When the shooting was over, and the dead were buried, and the spring came again, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West offered hope of a better day. “Better” was not saying much. The glamorous horizons of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West had their limitations, too. Cody provided seasonal work, not permanent employment. At $25 per month, the show paid far more than reservation jobs. But even with food, lodging, and a new suit of clothes thrown in, Indians received less than cowboys, and less than the regular wage of white men who worked in everyday jobs like bricklayers or plasterers. 100 The show employed dozens of Indians. But it could not employ more than a fraction of the reservation. In a time of wage deflation and pronounced labor unrest, Indians with no experience of the modern workplace, and who faced fierce racial discrimination and were not allowed to leave the reservation to find work, had little hope of other employment. The truth is that Indians performed in the Wild West show because in its day it was a fine place to work. But that truth underscores an inescapable fact: there were so few other places for Indians to work, and congressmen and bureaucrats were so penny-pinching, and the public was so apathetic, that Indians starved to death in spite of the Wild West show.

  For the Lakotas who encountered it, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West was a small creaky bridge to an uncertain future—but a bridge it was. For its Indian showmen, and their families, the show was not only a nostalgic glimpse of a vanishing West. As the events of the Ghost Dance suggest, it was a barely visible pathway, bending through a dark and frightening place, perhaps to a better tomorrow.

  Standing Bear

  HE WAS BORN a Minneconju Sioux, in 1859, by the cold, clear waters of the Tongue River, where his people sheltered from the winter blasts. He came of age hunting buffalo, fighting the Crows, and the Americans. He was a veteran of the battle of the Little Big Horn, where he fought when he was seventeen. As he later put it, he feared “the white men would just simply wipe us out and there would be no Indian nation.”1

  He was called Standing Bear. The name was not uncommon among the Lakota, and other men who shared it found their way to the Wild West show over the decades. (Luther Standing Bear, a Brule Sioux who joined the show in 1903 and who went on to become a movie actor, an author, and an activist, was no relation to this Standing Bear.)

  In 1887, Standing Bear joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West for its debut European season. He was with the show again in 1889 and 1890, during the Paris exposition and the tour of the Continent. In Vienna, he was injured in the show arena. Neither documents nor family tradition indicate what the injury was, but it required hospitalization. With several other Indians in the 1890 season, Standing Bear was left behind to recover. When the show departed Europe, Cody and Salsbury left a ticket for him at the American consulate, and instructions with the hospital on how to retrieve the ticket. 2

  Like many other Austrians, the nurse who tended Standing Bear, Louise Rieneck, was fascinated with Indians. She had seen the Wild West show in Vienna. As a Lutheran in Catholic Austria, she was already a social outsider. She was something of a linguist as well. Other than German, she read Latin and spoke French and English. From her patient, she began to learn Lakota.

  Standing Bear was hardly alone in becoming the focus of a European woman’s attention. He was a cousin of Black Elk, who had an English girl-friend, and of Red Shirt, who was admired by many women in Europe. Standing Bear was in the Paris camp in 1889 the day the prodigal Black Elk caught up with Cody’s show, and probably sat with him that night at the celebratory dinner. Many years later, Black Elk recalled the English woman he had just left. “I told my girl that I would go first and she would come afterward.” He was unable to keep that promise. 3

  Standing Bear, c. 1892. Courtesy Arthur Amiotte.

  Family tradition suggests Standing Bear had a wife at home. If so, they may have been in contact while he was in Europe. Many show Indians dictated letters to European and American friends, and sent them through the Indian agent on the reservation.4

  Sometime in early 1891, while he was convalescing in Austria, Standing Bear received word of the calamity at Wounded Knee Creek. His wife was dead. Not long after, he realized he could not leave Louise. Early in 1891, Standing Bear and Louise Rieneck were married. Then the couple was bound for the United States. On February 16, their ship, the Standia, docked in New York. Standing Bear arrived with Louise, her parents, Ernst and Hedwig Rieneck, and two young girls, Maria, age two, and Martha, age three, whose relationship to Louise has never been established. The entire family moved to Pine Ridge, but after a few years, Louise’s parents missed certain amenities (among them, says family tradition, the beer and wine which were illegal on the reservation). With Martha and Maria, they moved to Chicago, where they prospered in dry goods.5

  Standing Bear never joined the Wild West show again. His wife, who was soon known as Across-the-Eastern-Water-Woman, gave him much comfort and a reason not to stray too far. From the time he and Louise moved onto the reservation, they formed a powerful partnership that joined their shared energy and innovative spirit. His extensive female kin taught Louise about making a Lakota household. She brought them her knowledge of European medicine, horticulture, and animal husbandry.

  The couple provided services others could not. Poverty and disease took a heavy toll on neighbors and family. Traditionally, the Sioux placed their dead on scaffolds. Now, officials dictated that all bodies must be interred in the earth, in caskets. The caskets were simple wooden boxes, but they were expensive, and they were only available at the government commissary at Pine Ridge, a full day away by wagon. The time it took to travel there was almost as great an expense as the money.6

  Louise knew basic carpentry, which she taught Standing Bear after they bought some hammers, saws, and a plane. She ordered velvet, linen, and silk from her parents’ store in Chicago. Before long, neighbors drove from miles away for the simple, lined caskets, which they paid for in cash or in kind at Standing Bear’s home. Louise also made silk and paper flowers, and taught the skill to local Lakota women.

  Louise Rieneck, age sixteen, in Dresden, Germany. CourtesyArthur Amiotte.

  After 1900, Standing Bear and Louise moved to a new location on Whitehorse Creek, west of Manderson, where many of his extended family (including Black Elk) were settling. There, he plowed verdant meadows for a large garden. They continued to make caskets, and Louise’s knowledge of European medicine proved a boon, too. She ordered basic medicinal supplies through her parents in Chicago, and for decades, she was something of an unofficial country doctor who delivered babies, tended the ill, and dispensed medicines and advice.

  Three daughters, Hattie, Lillian, and Christina, were born to Standing Bear and Louise. In the reservation era, Pine Ridge society was increasingly divided between “mixed-bloods” and “full-bloods.” Mixed-bloods generally affected western clothing, were bilingual in Lakota and English, and had many contacts among white businessmen and more access to cash. Full-bloods spoke mostly Lakota, and their associations were more restricted to Lakota-speakers. They were generally poorer than mixed-bloods. Although the labels were racial, in reality such identities had as much to do with cultural choices as with ancestry. There were many children of mixed unions who did not identify with mixed-blood culture, and many full-bloods who assumed certain attributes of mixed-blood identity, too.

  For their part, Hattie, Lillian and Christina moved gracefully on the mixed-blood/full-blood divide, attending the mixed-bloods’ “white man dances” in beautiful European-style dresses they made with th
eir mother on her sewing machine, and their father’s traditional Lakota dances and ceremonies in Lakota-style dresses embroidered with beads and elk teeth. In fact, mother and daughters turned the cabin into a veritable factory of clothing: western-and Lakota-style dresses, as well as shirts, pants, and quilts, rolled off their sewing tables. At the same time, they continued to make moccasins of hand-tanned deer and cow hide, using traditional awls. 7

  So the family prospered. Seasonally, Standing Bear and his relatives drove their cattle between pastures at Whitehorse Creek and the high meadows of Red Shirt Table, where their cousins, the families of Red Shirt and High Eagle, helped tend their herds. Back at Whitehorse Creek, they cut hay for the winter, and before the fall frost, they slaughtered cattle and dried beef for winter storage and for gifts to neighboring families that were an obligation of their comparative wealth. The women of Standing Bear’s family taught Louise to gather and preserve chokecherries, buffalo berries, wild currants, and plums; she taught them to make savory German preserves, like sauerkraut, and pickles in brine. With plentiful cattle, and with the men bringing in deer occasionally, there was always a pile of hides that needed tanning, or gardening to do. Relatives and friends in need could drop by, offer their work, and take home food, clothing, and moccasins. Standing Bear’s influence grew. He became a chief of his local community, renowned for his generosity.

  Although he resisted allotment, like many Lakotas, Standing Bear eventually reconciled himself to it. By 1911, he and Louise had a large, hand-hewn log cabin, painted white, with a shingled, pitched roof, wooden floors, and frame windows. Two years later, visiting officials reported they also had a cabin and a barn and 640 acres of land, with 80 acres under plow. They owned one hundred cattle and thirty horses. At a time when the average U.S. worker made just $621 per year, they had $1,000 in savings.8

 

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