540 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1964 



reenactment of exciting episodes of the Old West that was so realistic 

 no one who ever saw it could forget it. Buffalo Bill's Wild West 

 Show opened in Omaha, Nebr., on May 17, 1883. It ran for more 

 than three decades, before millions of wide-eyed viewers in the cities 

 and towns of the United States and Canada ; in England ; and on the 

 continent of Europe. Sitting Bull himself traveled with the show 

 in 1885. It always included a series of performances staged in the 

 open by genuine Plains Indians — Pawnees, Sioux, Cheyennes, and/or 

 Arapahoes — chasing a small herd of buffalo, war dancing, horse 

 racing, attacking a settler's cabin and/or an emigrant train crossing 

 the Plains. A highlight of every performance was the Indian attack 

 on the Deadwood Mail Coach, whose passengers were rescued in the 

 nick of time by "Buffalo Bill" himself and his hard-riding cowboys. 

 This scene was conxmonly portrayed on the program covers and the 

 posters advertising the show (pi. 13). 



In 1887 this show was the hit of the American Exhibition at the 

 celebration of Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee in England, playing to 

 packed audiences in a large arena that held 40,000 spectators. The 

 Illustrated London News for April 16, 1887, tried to explain its 

 fascination : 



This remarkable exhibition, the "Wild West," has created a furore in America, 

 and the reason is easy to understand. It is not a circus, nor indeed is it acting 

 at all, in a theatrical sense, but an exact reproduction of daily scenes in frontier 

 life, as experienced and enacted by the very people who now form the "Wild 

 West" Company. 



Except in Spain, where no outdoor drama could quite replace the 

 bullfight, Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show met with almost equal suc- 

 cess on the European continent. During its 7 months' stand at the 

 Paris Exposition of 1889 it attracted many artists. The famous 

 French animal painter Rosa Bonheur pictured the show Indians 

 chasmg buffalo. Wliat is more, the Indians inspired Cyrus Dallin, a 

 gifted American sculptor then studying in Paris, to create the first 

 of a series of heroic statues of Plains Indians. "The Signal of Peace," 

 completed in time to win a medal at the Paris Salon of 1890, now 

 stands in Lincoln Park, Chicago. A second work, "The Medicine 

 Man" (1899), is in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia. The famous 

 sculptor Lorado Taft considered it Dallin's "greatest achievement" 

 and "one of the most notable and significant products of Americjin 

 sculpture" (pi. 14). Another, "The Appeal" (to the Great Spirit), 

 winner of a gold medal at the Paris Salon of 1909, sits astride his 

 horse in front of the Museum of Fine Art in Boston. And still a 

 fourth, "The Scout," may be seen atop a hill in Kansas City. Taft 

 termed Dallin's realistic equestrian Plains Indians "among the most 

 interesting public monuments in the country" (Taft, 1925, pp. 476-8, 

 576). 



