Buffalo Bill & Sitting Bull

Sitting Bull was killed 135 years ago today, on December 15, 1890.

Buffalo Bill’s Wild West presented itself, in both Europe and America, as an authentic historical exhibition—what its programs called the “Drama of Civilization” as it unfolded in the frontier West. Central to that story, and to the Wild West itself, were the show’s Lakota performers. This was Bill Cody’s show, and he was its star, but the Indians were its most essential element.

Audiences watched the Lakota engage in mock combat with cowboys during the performances, but they also wandered through the Sioux tepees on the show grounds, meeting Lakota men, women, and children and seeing how they lived as families. For many spectators, the spectacle of the arena was matched only by the experience of encountering Lakota people in person. For millions, this was their first, and often only, direct interaction with Native Americans.

The Lakota performers in the Wild West were, by the standards of the era, treated well. In 1889, the show paid out $28,800 to its Lakota cast. Lakota men earned $10 per month, and Cody hired their wives at the same rate, with small cash allowances for children. At a time when Native people were being systematically stripped of economic opportunity, the Wild West offered both relative financial security and a rare space in which religious ceremonies, songs, and dances could be practiced—rituals increasingly suppressed or outlawed on the reservations.

That suppression intensified rapidly. In 1887, Congress passed the Dawes Act, dismantling communally held tribal lands and assigning them to individuals. In March of 1889, the government broke the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, dividing the Great Sioux Reservation into five smaller reservations. In February of 1890, while Lakota performers with the Wild West were entertaining crowds, along with the Pope, in Rome, the federal government opened nine million acres, roughly half of the former Sioux reservation, to white settlement.

Shortly afterward, Congress cut Sioux rations by ten percent. One million fewer pounds of beef than promised reached Pine Ridge. Influenza, whooping cough, and measles tore through the reservation. It was literal decimation. Of the roughly 5,500 Lakota living at Pine Ridge in 1890, more than 540 died that year alone.

Then came the Ghost Dance.

Rooted in a vision received by a Paiute prophet named Wovoka, the Ghost Dance promised renewal: the return of the ancestors, the restoration of the land, and an end to suffering. Through circular dances and songs, participants sought purification and spiritual unity. To the Lakota, it was an act of faith and survival. To U.S. officials and settlers rushing to claim newly opened land, it appeared as a call to rebellion.

As the Ghost Dance spread, tensions escalated. General Nelson Miles believed bloodshed could still be avoided if Sitting Bull, the Hunkpapa Lakota holy man who had defeated Custer in 1876 and later performed in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West in 1885, could be taken into custody peacefully. At a banquet in Chicago in late 1890, Miles asked Buffalo Bill if he would help “secure the person of Sitting Bull and deliver him to the nearest officer of U.S. troops.”

Cody agreed. He headed for South Dakota with two wagons of gifts intended to ease Sitting Bull’s fears and persuade his old friend to come with him voluntarily.

James McLaughlin, the Standing Rock Indian agent, was incensed. Determined that the arrest of the most famous Lakota in America should be his accomplishment, McLaughlin moved quickly to block Cody’s involvement. He wired Washington demanding that Miles’ authorization be rescinded. He convinced an officer at Fort Yates to ply Cody with alcohol. When that failed, McLaughlin ordered two scouts to lie, telling Cody that Sitting Bull had already left camp and gone to the agency.

By the time President Benjamin Harrison rescinded Miles’ order, Buffalo Bill, deliberately misled and cut off from the situation, was forced to leave the reservation without seeing Sitting Bull.

Two weeks later, on December 15, 1890, McLaughlin ordered thirty-nine Indian police to surround Sitting Bull’s cabin. When Sitting Bull refused to comply with their demands, gunfire erupted. He was shot twice in the chest and once in the head. In the fighting that followed, eight policemen were killed, along with Sitting Bull and seven of his followers.

The consequences were both immediate and devastating. On December 29, 1890, U.S. troops intercepted a band of Miniconjou Lakota under Chief Big Foot near Wounded Knee Creek. What happened next remains disputed, but a shot was fired. The 7th Cavalry responded with overwhelming force. When the shooting ended, more than 150 Lakota men, women, and children lay dead. Some estimates placing the number closer to 300.

In the aftermath, leaders of the Ghost Dance movement were imprisoned at Fort Sheridan, and the commissioner of Indian affairs announced that no more Indians would be allowed to participate in show business. But General Miles, remembering Cody’s willingness to intervene peacefully, offered an alternative. With the support of Nebraska’s congressional delegation, Buffalo Bill received permission to take the imprisoned Lakota with him to Europe.

When Kicking Bear, first cousin of Crazy Horse, was released from prison, he told Buffalo Bill, “For six weeks I have been a dead man. Now that I see you, I am alive again.”

In April of 1891, twenty-three formerly imprisoned Lakota joined seventy-five others as the Wild West sailed for Antwerp.