Dancing at Halftime: Sports and the Controversy over American Indian Mascots

The Wild West

The Wild West For most Americans, to be Indian is to be Sioux. The final wars between the U.S. army and the Great Sioux Nation took place after photography had been invented , and images of the fighting Sioux were published in popular newspapers and dime novels. After their defeat, Sioux men toured with Wild West shows to reenact their battles with the U.S. cavalry. A combination circus, rodeo, and traveling outdoor theater, Wild West shows were enormously popular from the 1880s through the 1920s. The originator of the Wild West show and the person always connected with it is William Frederick Cody, known as Buffalo Bill. Buffalo Bill always pointed out that he had really lived the life he depicted. He claimed to have ridden for the Pony Express at fourteen and to have been a dispatch rider for the Union army when he was fifteen. He got his nickname working for the Union Pacific Railroad. He killed over four thousand head of buffalo in eight months to feed the railroad construction crews. In the Indian wars, he served the army as a scout, dispatch rider, and guide and was a veteran of sixteen Indian fights. Buffalo Bill refused to call his show a circus. Nor did he like “Wild West show,” for both suggested the imaginary theatrical world. He sometimes allowed Wild West Exhibition, but most often when Buffalo Bill and his performers came to town, they were simply the Wild West. He combined a genius for showmanship with a reputation for authenticity. The audience, sitting on bleachers under a tent, were convinced they were watching the history of western expansion. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, like modern sports events, began with “The StarSpangled Banner” played by the troupe’s own band. Then there was the grand entrance of all the performers, not just cowboys and Indians, but the “Rough 108 Riders of the World.” As many as four hundred riders came cantering in. Last of all, Buffalo Bill himself rode into the arena, dressed in beautiful fringed buckskin. Audiences adored him. Tall, mustachioed, with long gray hair flowing from under his trademark Stetson hat, he always played to the top rows of the bleachers. Five to seven separate acts followed. The riding and roping tricks were called “cowboy fun.” They developed out of contests at Fourth of July celebrations in 109 Cover of the program for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West at the World’s Colombian Exposition in 1893. Although it is reproduced here in black and white, the original cover was printed in color. The program included excerpts of letters attacking Buffalo Bill’s treatment of Indians and his defense. Courtesy of the Chicago Historical Society. western towns and eventually evolved into the modern rodeo. A performance of Indian dancing often separated events. Then there were short theatrical pieces— an attack on a settler’s cabin, for example, or an attack by “marauding Indians” on a wagon train. All attacks were repulsed by Buffalo Bill, the frontier hero, who galloped in with his scouts in the nick of time. Sharpshooting was another popular act. Annie Oakley was the best marksman ever to tour in a Wild West show; she was also the audience favorite. Smiling shyly, she put a bullet through a dime tossed in the air, split the thin edge of a playing card, and shot off the burning tip of her husband’s cigarette at thirty paces. She could sight into a mirror with her back turned and shatter every one of the hundred glass balls thrown into the air. More theatrical reenactments followed: a buffalo hunt, a Pony Express ride. There were also horse races and demonstrations of horsemanship. The show always included a scenario about the Deadwood mail stage traveling from Deadwood to Cheyenne and being attacked by hostile Sioux. Buffalo Bill always rode up just in time to save the stage. The grand finale was often Custer’s Last Stand. To add to the drama, the performers who came to town had been participants in the real-life battles they now acted out. The actors were historical figures and vice versa. The stagecoach they attacked was the very one, riddled with bullet holes, that once ran on the Deadwood line. Just as exciting as the actual performance was the Indian encampment. Imagine a large group of Sioux setting up their tepees outside a midwestern town in 1907. No...