Buffalo Bill Cody first brought his Wild West Show to Britain in 1887, in Queen Victoria’s Jubilee Year. The show was a huge success, featuring a cast of around 800 people, including Annie Oakley, Indians and Indian fighters, cowboys, and such exotic beasts as bison, elk and Texas longhorns. It was such a success that Cody returned in 1891-1892 (drawing £10,000 in revenue in Cardiff alone) and again in 1902 and 1904.
Remarkable things happened during Cody’s tours: when the show toured Germany, Annie Oakley shot the ash from a cigarette in the hand of the future Kaiser Wilhelm, and observed later in life that if her aim had been worse, history might have been better (Victoria told Annie she was ‘a very, very clever little girl; Sitting Bull called her ‘Miss Sure Shot’). Some of the cast got lost along the way to romantic or drunken encounters in such desolate places as Paisley and Hull, and show members were constantly invited to take part in local events, some of which were highly memorable in their own right: Cody’s manager, for example, was invited by Glasgow Celtic to kick off at the start of a Scottish Cup tie against Dumbarton, the game ending in what is still Celtic’s worst-ever home defeat – by eight goals to nil.
The snootiest comment on the show’s reception in Britain actually came from an American, the poet James Russell Lowell, who attributed its success to ‘the dullness of the average English mind’. If so, it was a dullness shared by Queen Victoria, who was entranced by the Indians, in particular by the Lakota, who in turn revered her as ‘Grandmother England’. Canada was the grandmother’s country, a place of sanctuary patrolled by her soldiers who wore red coats so the Indians could see them and know they were safe from the US Cavalry. When Sitting Bull, who toured occasionally with the show in the US, took his people across the border in 1877 he showed a Mountie a medal given to an ancestor by the British for help in fighting the Americans. For the Lakota, the British were old friends.
In 1905, during vicious divorce proceedings, Cody’s wife Lulu alleged that Victoria had made improper advances to Cody. Even in old age, Cody was a fine-looking man, but this remarkable allegation has to be unfounded; all observers are agreed that the man singled out by Victoria for his looks (as testified in her diary) was that handsome Lakota, Red Shirt, and as Black Elk notes in Black Elk Speaks (1932), the Lakota were much taken by her. After inviting the Lakota to Windsor, she told Black Elk (Cody was perhaps not present) that if the Lakota were her subjects, ‘I would not let them take you around in a show like this’.
The 1891 tour included a ceremony in Manchester to honour special guests, the 19 surviving members of the Light Brigade. Also present at this ceremony, though their presence was not highlighted, were another 19 survivors, Lakota who had survived the previous year’s massacre of their kin by the 7th Cavalry at Wounded Knee. The Lakota had been given into Cody’s custody by the US government. One of those survivors was Black Elk. who at the age of 12 had ridden beside his cousin Crazy Horse at the Little Big Horn in 1876 in what the Lakota called the’ Greasy Grass fight’ against Custer. Black Elk wrote about Wounded Knee: ‘I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people’s dream died there. It was a beautiful dream . . . the nation’s hoop is broken and scattered. There is no centre any longer, and the sacred tree is dead’.
What Happened Next
Victoria’s beloved husband Prince Albert had died in 1862, and Victoria went into a very long period of mourning that eventually affected the popularity of the monarchy in Britain: even The Times, that imperious voice of the establishment, suggested that it might now be time for the country to consider becoming a republic. Plays and shows came by regal request to what Kipling called the ‘Widow at Windsor’, so when Victoria announced she would attend Cody’s show at Earl’s Court there was great excitement. Her decision to travel was possibly prompted by the thought of all those wild animals making a mess of Windsor Park, but whatever the reason she and her subjects thoroughly enjoyed themselves. The popularity of the monarchy soared and talk of a republic receded. As for Black Elk, he lived until 1950, a revered medicine man and an acknowledged spokesmen for all Native Americans. Black Elk Speaks is regarded by many as a founding text of New Ageism, but despite that doubtful endorsement, remains an enthralling, indeed inspirational, text.