THE PLAINS INDIAN — EWERS 539 



Plains after the Civil War, and the Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa, 

 and Comanche resisted White invasion of their buffalo hunting 

 grounds. Newspaper and magazine reporters were sent West to re- 

 port the resultant Indian wars. Theodore K. Davis, artist-reporter 

 for Harper's Weekly, was riding in a Butterfield Overland Dispatch 

 Coach when it was attacked by Cheyennes near the Smoky Hill Spring 

 stage station on November 24, 1865. His vivid picture of this real- 

 life experience, published in Harper'^s Weekly, April 21, 1866, was the 

 prototype of one of the most enduring symbols of the Wild West — 

 the Indian attack on the overland stage (pi. 11). 



As the Indians of the Plains made their desperate last stand against 

 the Army of the United States they again and again demonstrated 

 their courage and skill as warriors. On the Little Bighorn, Jime 26, 

 1876, they wiped out Custer's immediate command in the most decisive 

 defeat for American arms in our long history. Numerous artists, 

 largely upon the basis of their imaginations, sought to picture that 

 dramatic action. One pictorial reconstruction of a closing stage of 

 this battle. Otto Becker's lithograph "Custer's Last Fight," after 

 Cassilly Adams' painting, has become one of the best-known American 

 pictures. Copyrighted by Anheuser-Busch in 1896, more than 150,000 

 copies of this large print have been distributed. It has provided a 

 lively conversation piece for millions of customers in thousands of 

 barrooms throughout the country (Taft, 1953, pp. 142-148). (See 

 pi. 12.) 



Four years before his death, George Armstrong Custer published 

 serially in the Galaxy, a respectable middle-class magazine, "My Life 

 on the Plains," in which he expressed his admiration for "the fearless 

 hunter, matchless horseman and warrior of the Plains." Many Army 

 officers who had fought against these Indians expressed similar opin- 

 ions in widely read books on their experiences, some of which were 

 profusely illustrated with reproductions of drawings and photographs, 

 including portraits of many of the leading chiefs and warriors among 

 the hostiles — Eed Cloud, Satanta, Gaul, Sitting Bull, and others. 

 The exploits of these leaders on the warpath became better known to 

 late 19th-century readers than those of such earlier Indian heroes of 

 the forest as King Pliilip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola, and Black 

 Hawk. 



THE WILD WEST SHOW AND ITS INFLUENCES (1883- ) 



On July 20, 1881, Sitting Bull, the last of the prominent Indian 

 leaders m the Plains Indian wars to surrender his rifle, returned from 

 his Canadian exile and gave himself up to the authorities of the United 

 States. But within 2 years William F. Cody, pony express rider, 

 scout, Indian fighter, and hero of hundreds of dune novels, whose 

 hunting skill had earned liim the name "Buffalo Bill," organized a 



