Social Victorians/1887 American Exhibition/Wild West

General Description of the "Wild West," Especially as it Existed in London in 1887

In London at Earl's Court, as Part of the American Exhibition of 1887

Events

The American Exhibition, which opened on 6 May 1887

Regular Members of the Company or People Regularly Associated with the Show in Some Official Capacity

According to Wernitznig, a total of 218 humans went to London on board the ship, including the 97 American Indians (79).

The 97 Indigenous Americans

A total of 97 American Indians were in the company, on the State of Nebraska, the ship that brought the company over (Wernitznig 75), and 97 people should be on this list. Cody says that the group included "representative types of the Sioux, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Pawnee and Ogallas tribes" (Cody 702).

1. Black Elk, Lakota; known as Choice on the contract (Moses 44)
2. Fly Above (Moses 57)
3. Little Bull (Moses 57)
4. Jenny Nelson, Oglala; the Nelson women were responsible for some fine and "distinctive beadwork"; the Nelsons had children with them as well. (Bol 218).
5. John Y. Nelson, "acted both as interpreter and performed as the Deadwood stagecoach driver in the shows" (Bol 218)
6. Julie Nelson, daughter of Jenny and John (Bol 220)
7. Red Shirt, Ogilasa, Sioux chief (Wernitznig 79); Oglala and "spokesman for the Lakotas" in the show (Bridger 338).
8. Rocky Bear (Moses 55)

Latino, Latina and Spanish-speaking People

The company included what Cody calls Mexicans (Cody 718). We don't know how many yet, and so we don't know how many people should be on this list:

1. Mexican Joe
2. Antonio Esquival (not certain how he was racialized)

White Performers and Families

1. Johnny Baker
2. Sergeant Bates
3. Arta Cody, William F. Cody's daughter? (She left with him on the steamer to England [Cody 702]).
4. Col. William F. [Frederick] Cody (Buffalo Bill)
5. Jim Eldd
6. Ed Goodman, Cody's nephew, sold programs (Springhall 119)
7. William D. Guthrie, U.S. attorney
8. Dick Johnson (Cody 733)
9. Jim Kidd (Cody 733)
10. M. Lévy (Shaw 76)
11. Mitchell (Cody 733)
12. "Mustang Jack"
13. Annie Oakley
14. Mr. Frank Richmond, narrator (Cody 731)
15. Lilian Smith
16. Buck Taylor (Cody 731, 733) [according to Burke: November 1857 - 1924 (Burke 306)]
17. Harry Webb [has written a memoir] (Cody 733)

Management

1. John Burke, third of partners, publicity and press agent; Cody calls him "our advance manager, Jno. M. Burke"; "Arizona John" (Cody 706; Burke [title page]).
2. Lew Parker, publicity agent
3. Nathan (Nate) Salsbury, Cody's partner, did the management; an American performer Cody met in the 1880s in the U.S., born in 1846 (Cody 694)
4. John Robinson Whitley, organizer, from Yorkshire; Gower calls him "the Director General" (Wernitznig 75; Moses 40; Gower 56). Biography by Charles Lowe, 1892.

A Souvenir Commemorative Album of one of the command performances for the Queen lists the following as personnel for the Wild West in London, 1887

Buffalo Bill's "Wild West" Camp

Staff (p. 46)

Charles Lowe, in his Four National Exhibitions in London and Their Organiser, describes the people and animals — which he calls properties — in the show

We have already alluded to the circumstances (see page 56) under which Mr. Whitley induced Colonel Cody to come over to London with all his panoramic personnel of rough-riders and redskins; and certainly no Circus, Show, or Theatre ever boasted of so large a stock of spectacular "properties" as were now transported by "Buffalo Bill" from New York to London. These [84/85] included bands of Indians (110 in number), Sioux, Cheyennes, Ogallallas, Araphoes, Sboshones, and other tribes, with their squaws and children — all under the command of "Red Shirt," a magnificent specimen of Redskin manhood; cowboys or cattle-herders and Mexican prairie riders, to the number of about 150, with 170 "bronco" horses and Indian ponies, comprising some wild and incorrigible "buckers;" twelve mules, sixty-four various tents, a dozen different "prairie-schooners" or emigrant- waggons, nine elk, two deer, eight wild Texas steers, sixteen buffaloes, 200 Mexican and cowboy saddles, 100 Indian saddles, with a formidable armoury of American and Indian weapons ; and last of all the famous Deadwood stage-coach, in the same condition as when last attacked by Indians and highwaymen. (84–85)

The "Drama of Civilization"

The pageant at the heart of the "Wild West" was a narrative called "The Drama of Civilization." As Moses describes it, Steele Mackaye had incorporated much of "The Drama of Civilization" into the show at Earl's Court. Symbolically, it represented the triumph of Anglo-American civilization over Native Americans. Buffalo Bill himself later echoed this theme in his autobiography. He remembered the pride he felt when sailing for England: pride in himself, his show, his country, and his civilization. He recalled the Indians who accompanied him as "that savage foe that had been compelled to submit to a conquering civilization and were now accompanying me in friendship, loyalty, and peace, five thousand miles from their homes, braving the dangers of the ... great unknown sea, now no longer a tradition, but a reality." Indians and other rough riders combined in an exhibition "intended to prove to the center of the old world civilization that the vast region of the United States was finally and effectively settled by the English-speaking race."7 [“THIS PAGE NOT IN GOOGLE PREVIEW” (Moses 292 n. 7)]

Indians, however, did not necessarily adopt the part of a conquered race. They might play one in the arena, in the mock defeats suffered at the hands of Buffalo Bill and his cowboy compatriots; but their words and actions do not appear to be those of a chastened and, therefore, wiser foe.

Indians had joined the shows for the money and the adventure. They received both in sufficiency. (Moses 44)

Or so Moses says.

General Descriptions

In his Four National Exhibitions in London and Their Organiser, Charles Lowe describes the transition from the main building of the exhibition to the arena, where the Wild West was performed

<quote>Thus the Exhibition Buildings with their industrial display, their Art Galleries, Trophies Hall, Panorama of New York Harbour by Bartholdi, and Gardens with their American vegetation, their Tobogganing Slide and Switchback Railway, were all calculated to carry English visitors in imagination to the busy haunts and homes, the pastimes and workshops of their American cousins; but these visitors positively seemed to lose their sense of local habitation, and to feel themselves altogether transported in body beyond the Atlantic, when they passed across the bridge leading from the Main Building into the vast arena (of about seven acres, and provided with galleries capable of accommodating 15,000 to 20,000 spectators) which had been ringed round with Rocky Mountain scenery, forming a framework to the fascinating pictures of the life and habits of the "Wild West," as presented by "Buffalo Bill" and his tribes and troops of Indians, Cowboys, and Mexicans.</quote> (82–83)

According to Holbrook, this account of Cody as an abstainer appeared in what looks to be a temperance magazine.

Cody was probably not abstaining in London.

<quote>Buffalo Bill, we are told, is a total abstainer. The manager o[f the] Wild West Show says, "Our people are abstainers generally, ... [page unreadable] hazardous work requiring complete self-possession at all times. A[ll the] great marksmen of the world are abstainers, the use of stimulants [is] fatal to them professionally. (Temperance 118) [Note: page has text missing, not scanned; guessed on missing words.]</quote>

There is other evidence, however, that Cody drank, and sometimes quite heavily, especially in the early days, and that Burke was concerned with keeping the drinking under control in London. (Holbrook 70 Col. B)

From an article on boys as criminals

<quote>Our subject receives further illustration from the effect that the exploits of the cowboys of Buffalo Bill in London and Texas Joe in Liverpool produced on many of our juveniles. To be a cowboy became the rage, and every lad who could get hold of his mother's clothes-line for a lariat or his father's wide-awake for a sombrero practised throwing the lasso, till not a dog could prowl the streets without a good chance of being suddenly "yanked" off its legs by a flying rope. The shrill yells of these lads and the loud cracks of their toy pistols, making day and night hideous, acted as a continual advertisement for the Wild West Show. Numberless letters were written by schoolboys modestly offering to join the cowboy troupe. One Liverpool lad wrote: "I hear every day that you want boys So I should like to see you in private. I have tried to get 3 pence to come and see you Because I am sure you would like me I can sing fence shoot I don't mean to say as I am a marksman but I know how to handle one. I am waiting for an answer." Another says: "I herd you wanted a few boys to join your compy. I will make a bargain with you if I suit you to do anything you may want me to do as long as you keep me in clothes and food I will go with you without wagers except a few pence for pocket-money."

The majority of the epistles represent more than one applicant, one of them being signed by no fewer than eight lads. Two other youths wrote: "We would like to go back with you to America and if you refuse us we should feel it greatly ... [sic] We like the cowboys their ways and deeds very much indeed. Please don't refuse us and believe us both to be two true cowboys on your permission." The picturesque costume of the ladies of the troupe seems to have proved alluring to a few of their own sex, who expressed their willingness to abandon a dull life in Liverpool for the dangers and excitements of a sojourn in the far West, and offered themselves as wives for the cowboys. Such are a few extracts from letters of many who are eager to forsake friends and country in order to seek adventures of which they have only been accustomed to read in thrilling romances. The fact that these applicants' services were not needed will doubtless be a source of satisfaction to most of them in years to come.</quote> ("Boyish" 443 Cols. A–B)

Sometime during the run of the Wild West in London

<quote>When Buffalo Bill took his cowboys to Europe they made a practice in England, France, Germany, and Italy of offering to break and ride, in their own fashion, any horse given them. They were frequently given spoiled animals from the cavalry services in the different countries through which they passed, animals with which the trained horse-breakers of the European armies could do nothing; and yet in almost all cases the cowpunchers and bronco-busters with Buffalo Bill mastered these beasts as readily as they did their own western horses. At their own work of mastering and riding rough horses they could not be matched by their more civilized rivals; but I have great doubts whether they in turn would not have been beaten if they had essayed kinds of horsemanship utterly alien to their past experience, such as riding mettled thoroughbreds in a steeple-chase, or the like. Other things being equal (which, however, they generally are not), a bad, big horse fed on oats offers a rather more difficult problem than a bad little horse fed on grass.</quote> (Roosevelt 205–206)

This article, about the extinction of the bison in the U.S., was published in the Illustrated London News on 18 June 1887

<quote>"Buffalo Bill" (the Hon. Colonel W. F. Cody, of Nebraska), the hero of "the Wild West," is daily astonishing thousands of spectators at the Great American Exhibition with his companies of hunters, "cow-boys," and native Indians, by riding and shooting feats of great variety. The American bison, commonly called the buffalo, and the wapiti deer, still found on the Western plains, though rapidly disappearing from the neighbourhod of settled townships and from along the railroad lines, figure as beasts of chase in this unique entertainment. Sportsmen who would indulge a fancy for pursuing these large animals in North America will have to make haste; in a very few years there will not be a herd of them left. Dr. Grinnell, the author of "Forest and Stream," ascertained last summer, by careful inquiry, that the number of buffaloes remaining in the United States' territory did not exceed seven or eight hundred altogether, including about 350 in Wyoming, with the "national Park" of the Yellowstone region; fifty-two in Montana, near the head of the Musselshell river; about thirty at the head of the Dismal river, in Nebraska; in the mountains of Colorado, one herd of thirty and one of twenty; in the sand-hills of Kansas, and to the south, in the "Pan-handle" district of Texas, three or four hundred; a good many of which have been killed this year. The species, as a wild and free animal, will probably be quite extinct in North America some time before the end of the nineteenth century, being slaughtered without reserve for the sake of the hides. Hunters for sport prefer to chase the buffalo on horseback, singling out a victim from the herd, and pursuing him close till he can be shot with the rifle or heavy revolver. Stalking or "still hunting," on foot, is the more destructive practice of the men who follow it for gain of the spoils; they creep up, on the leeward side, to within fifty, sixty, or seventy yards of the herd, and shoot down one after another, while the remaining beasts, though slightly disturbed, move away but a few paces. The wapiti deer is a familiar object near the Regent's Park entrance to our Zoological Gardens. In a wild state, finding refuge in the forests at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, which are its winter abode, this animal may continue its existence some time longer. Its flesh and skin contribute to the support of some Indian tribes. It can be captured alive by a horseman throwing the lasso. But all these roving denizens of the wilderness are destined soon to give place to the spread of American civilisation; which will cover the "Wild West" from the Missouri to Oregon, to Utah, Nevada, and California, with the settled habitations of regular industry. The reader who would like to know something of "Buffalo Bill's" personal adventures should get Murray's Magazine for June, in which he has written a few pages on "Fighting and Trapping Out West."</quote> (American Exhibition: "Wild West". Illustrated London News (London, England), Saturday, June 18, 1887; pg. 684; Issue 2513, Col. C)

Bibliography

• American Exhibition: "Wild West". Illustrated London News (London, England), Saturday, June 18, 1887; pg. 684; Issue 2513, Col. *C.
• Bol
• "Boyish" 443 Cols. A–B
• Bridger
• Burke
• Cody
• Gower
• Holbrook
• Lowe, Charles. Biography, 1892
• Lowe, Charles. Four National Exhibitions in London and Their Organiser.
• Moses
• Roosevelt
• Shaw
• Souvenir Album of the Visit of Her Majesty Queen Victoria to the American Exhibition, London, 1887. MS 6, William F. Cody *Collection. McCracken Research Library, Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Cody, Wyoming.
• Wernitznig