Show Indians, or Wild West Show Indians, is a term for Native American performers hired by Wild West shows, most notably in Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders. "Show Indians" were primarily Oglala Lakota from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota. Performers took part in reenacting historic battles, demonstrating equestrianism and performing dances for audiences. Many veterans from the Great Plains Wars participated in Wild West shows, during a time when the Office of Indian Affairs was intent on promoting Native assimilation. Many went on to act in silent films.
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 hunting bison. The shaping of the western myth was aided in part through the Wild West shows of William Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody, whose show toured the United States and Europe between 1883 and 1913.Bobby Bridger, Buffalo Bill and Sitting Bull: Inventing the Wild West (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002); Matthew Carter, Myth of the Western: New Perspectives on Hollywood's Frontier Narrative (Edinburgh University Press, 2014), 7-9. Native Americans were hired from the earliest stages of the show, first drawn from the Pawnee tribe (1883–1885) and then the Lakota tribe.Louis Warren, Buffalo Bill's America: William Cody and the Wild West Show (New York: Vintage, 2005), 191-194.
The phrase "Show Indians" likely originated among newspaper reporters and editorial writers as early as 1891. By 1893, the term appeared frequently in the Office of Indian Affairs correspondence. Personnel refer to Indians employed in Wild West shows and other exhibitions using the phrase "Show Indian," thereby indicating a form of professional status.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. Native performers referred to themselves as oskate wicasa, or "show man."
Hiring practices
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 the Pine Ridge Agency. Indians were central to the Wild West shows from the very beginning. In the first 1883 show in Omaha, Nebraska, six of the twelve performances, including the opening parade, employed Indians.
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 the Battle of the Little Bighorn and as the last Native American to surrender to the government during the American Indian Wars. He joined the show in Buffalo, New York, on June 12, 1885. Although he toured for only one season, Sitting Bull set the course for all subsequent Show Indian employment.Joy Kasson, Buffalo Bill's Wild West: Celebrity, Memory, and Popular History (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000), 169–183. 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.L.G. Moses, Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians, 1883–1933 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), 2–5.
Types of performances Show Indians contributed several performances to the Wild West shows. They showcased equestrianism, demonstrated their skills with bows and arrows, and exhibited their artistry in dance. The most memorable performances were the historical re-enactments 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, between 1885 and 1898, the shows also re-enacted the Battle of the Little Bighorn and the death of George Armstrong Custer as well as the Wounded Knee Massacre after that incident in 1890.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. The performances provided Native Americans with 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.Vine Deloria, "The Indians," 56. 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.L.G. Moses, Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians, 1883–1933 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), 277.
Conflict over hiring Native Americans
Protectionist groups, such as the Indian Rights Association and the Office 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 from alleged mistreatment and exploitation on behalf of Wild West show promoters.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. 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.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.
The Office of Indian Affairs, on the other hand, worried about the effect of the shows on its assimilation policies. The battles between the government and show promoters was over whose image of American Indians would prevail.L.G. Moses, Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians, 1883-1933 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), 5. In 1886, the Office 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 OIA agents. Only after fulfilling the new stipulations of the OIA would the commissioner grant Indians permission to leave the reservation. The employment of Indians in unauthorized shows was particularly worrisome for the OIA, which feared that having Indians under the employ of a show without the guarantee of care and protection could lead to degrading employee health and morals.L.G. Moses, Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians, 1883–1933 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), 70–71.
The Office of Indian Affairs, under Thomas Jefferson Morgan, who became commissioner in the summer of 1889, was especially critical of Indian employment in the 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 new contracts, he often turned them down or imposed requirements that the shows could not possibly meet, in effect preventing Indians from joining those shows. Morgan also threatened aspiring Indian performers by withholding land allotments, annuities, and tribal status and 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.L.G. Moses, Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians, 1883-1933 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), 73–79.
In 1890, Indians named "No Neck" and "Black Heart" testified in an inquiry before the Office of Indian Affairs. The hearing weighed the morality of Indian employment in show business. "You are engaged in the exhibition or show business," observed the acting commissioner, 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 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. The contrast reflected poorly on the Office of Indian Affairs. Rocky Bear began by pointing out that he long had served the interests of the federal government (Great White Father) by encouraging the development of Indian reservations. 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 [White] 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, saying "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 for these kind of men."Buffalo Bill's America: William Cody and the Wild West Show By Louis S. Warren, at 372 (2005)
On the road with Buffalo Bill