NOTES ON THE WRITING OF THIS BOOK
To write this book, I traveled across the Great Plains to visit many of the locations mentioned in it, and as I do with all of my work, I talked with a wide range of people and consulted a number of texts. Those I spoke with included scholars, librarians, museum curators, members of the Lakota and other tribes, current Wild West reenactors, and various other relevant figures. The texts that ground my writing include first-person Native American and cavalry accounts, government records, nineteenth-century newspaper reports, oral histories, auction house records, letters, interviews, maps, songs, poems, books, films, television documentaries, and plays. Many of these sources are cited in my narrative, so are not included in the following chapter-by-chapter notes and list of references. A number of books served as a kind of foundation for my book, and they are cited where quoted, but I’ll mention them here as well, as they are essential reading on the matters at hand.
They are: Buffalo Bill’s America by Louis Warren; The Lives and Legends of Buffalo Bill by Don Russell; Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians by L. G. Moses; Buffalo Bill and the Wild West by Henry Blackman Sell and Victor Weybright; Buffalo Bill: His Family, Friends, Fame, and Failures by Nellie Snyder Yost; True Tales of the Plains by William F. Cody; Woman Walking Ahead: In Search of Catherine Weldon by Eileen Pollack; The Ghost-Dance Religion and Wounded Knee by James Mooney; Sitting Bull: His Life and Legacy by Ernie LaPointe; Robert Utley’s books about Sitting Bull, including Sitting Bull: The Life and Times of an American Patriot, The Lance and the Shield: The Life and Times of Sitting Bull, and The Last Days of the Sioux Nation; Sitting Bull: Champion of the Sioux by Stanley Vestal; Sitting Bull, Prisoner of War by Dennis C. Pope; Sitting Bull by Bill Yenne; Annie Oakley of the Wild West by Walter Havighurst; Annie Oakley by Shirl Kasper; The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley by Glenda Riley; The Destruction of the Bison by Andrew C. Isenberg; and Black Elk Speaks by John G. Neihardt.
It should be noted that there is some controversy surrounding Black Elk Speaks. First published in 1932, and then in subsequent editions, it is the account of the Lakota holy man Black Elk as recorded by John G. Neihardt, longtime Nebraska resident and state poet laureate whose affinity for Native Americans led him to record Black Elk’s visions. After the book was published, it gained an ever-growing following and was, and still is, regarded by many (including this author) as a great work of theological import. Yet over time, some critics said that Neihardt embellished the stories, and that perhaps the account is a blending of his and Black Elk’s visions. Let’s defer to the Native American writer Vine Deloria, Jr. on this matter. As he says in the latest edition of the book (2000), “Neihardt’s Black Elk Speaks and When the Tree Flowered, and The Sacred Pipe by Joseph Epes Brown, the basic works of the Black Elk theological tradition, now bid fair to become the canon or at least the central core of a North American Indian theological canon which will someday challenge the Eastern and Western traditions as a way of looking at the world. . . . The very nature of great religious teachings is that they encompass everyone who understands them and personalities become indistinguishable from the transcendent truth that is expressed. So let it be with Black Elk Speaks.”
Other books and texts that have informed my work but are not listed here are mentioned inside the narrative and/or are included in my extensive bibliography. What follows is a look at each chapter and the main sources used in addition to the above-mentioned essential reading. I should also note that certain passages from this book previously appeared in my book Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West, as noted in the chapter breakdown below. Some material also originally appeared in my “Letter from the West” columns on www.truthdig.com and in the Los Angeles Review of Books.
For the introduction, I drew from “Celebration of Forgiveness at Black Elk Peak,” by David Rooks, Indian Country Media Network, September 30, 2016, and “Oglala Veteran Pushed for Black Elk Peak,” by Jim Kent for Lakota Country Times, reprinted on www.indianz.com, August 26, 2016.
For Chapter 1, “In Which Public Enemy Number One Comes Home,” I drew from the following books: The Wild West: A History of the Wild West Shows by Don Russell; Adventures of the Ojibbeway and Ioway Indians: In England, France, and Belgium, Volume 1 and Volume 2 by George Catlin; Sitting Bull in Canada by Tony Hollihan; My Friend, the Indian by James McLaughlin; and Prairie Man: The Struggle Between Sitting Bull and Indian Agent James McLaughlin by Norman E. Matteoni. I also referred to “Enemies in ’76, Friends in ’85—Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill,” an article by Louis Pfaller in Prologue: The Journal of the National Archives, Fall 1969.
The books Sitting Bull by Bill Yenne and Sitting Bull: Prisoner of War by Dennis C. Pope were of much aid and insight, and the fact that one of Sitting Bull’s wives, Four Robes, gave birth to a daughter en route to Fort Randall was determined by Pope in his examination of population records of that period.
For Chapter 2, “In Which the Wild West Is Born—and Dies and Is Resurrected from the Bottom of the Mississippi River,” I drew from Buffalo Bill’s Life Story, An Autobiography; Buffalo Bill and His Horses by Agnes Wright Spring; Last of the Great Scouts (Buffalo Bill) by Zane Grey and Helen Cody Wetmore; Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West by Deanne Stillman; The Buffalo Hunters: The Story of the Hide Men by Mari Sandoz; the archives at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming; the Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave in Golden, Colorado.
For Chapter 3, “In Which the Seventh Cavalry Is Defeated at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, and Buffalo Bill Stars as Himself in ‘The Red Right Hand, or the First Scalp for Custer,’ ” I referred to Custer, Cody, and Grand Duke Alexis: Historical Archaeology of the Royal Buffalo Hunt by Douglas Scott; Custer’s Gold by Donald Jackson; The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn by Nathaniel Philbrick; Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West by Deanne Stillman; His Very Silence Speaks by Elizabeth Atwood Lawrence; To Kill An Eagle: Indian Views on the Last Days of Crazy Horse by Edward and Mabel Hadlecek; Crazy Horse and Custer by Stephen Ambrose; Son of the Morning Star by Evan S. Connell; Boots and Saddles, or Life in Dakota with General Custer by Elizabeth B. Custer; Buffalo Bill on Stage by Sandra K. Sagala; and American History, August 2011, the article from US History in Context described “Soothsayer Sitting Bull’s ability to embrace the Great Mystery and commune with meadowlarks made him one of America’s greatest spiritual leaders.” The Walter Stanley Campbell (pen name Stanley Vestal) papers at the University of Oklahoma were also of service; they contain numerous interviews with contemporaries of Sitting Bull, including One Bull, and transcriptions of Sitting Bull’s songs.
For Chapter 4, “In Which Sitting Bull Is Hired and Heads East for the Wild West,” I referred to various newspaper accounts regarding the occasion of his hiring by Buffalo Bill’s advance man, John Burke, including those in the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, June 11, 1885, entitled, “Sioux Warriors: Sitting Bull and Other Braves Coming to Join a ‘Wild West’ Show,’ ” Milwaukee Sentinel, June 11, 1885; “The Sitting Bull Party,” Bismarck Daily Tribune, June 12, 1885; and “Greek Meets Greek: A Thrilling and Romantic Encounter Between Redskins and Pale Face Chieftains,” Buffalo Courier, June 13, 1885.
For Chapter 5, “In Which Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill Join Up in the City of Buffalo, and Tatanka Iyotake Reunites with Annie Oakley,” I consulted the above-mentioned Buffalo Courier article; the archives at the National Annie Oakley Archives at Garst Museum in Greenville, Ohio; the Annie Oakley and Buffalo Bill chapters of The Wild West PBS documentary series for The American Experience (available on DVD); and Annie Get Your Gun (original film, 1950).
For Chapter 6, “In Which an Indian and a Wasichu Certify Their Alliance Across the Medicine Line,” I drew from William Notman: The Stamp of a Studio by Stanley G. Triggs; William Notman’s Studio: The Canadian Picture by Stanley G. Triggs; Buffalo Bill and Sitting Bull: Inventing the Wild West by Bobby B
ridger; the play Indians by Arthur Kopit and the Robert Altman film based on it, Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson (with Paul Newman as Buffalo Bill); the catalogue for Buffalo Bill and the Wild West, an exhibition presented at the Brooklyn Museum November 21, 1981–January 17, 1982, and its essay, “The Indians,” by Vine Deloria, Jr.; “Sitting Bull Talks,” New York Herald interview, Jeremy Stilson, October 17, 1877; and Teton Sioux Music and Culture by Frances Densmore.
For Chapter 7, “In Which There Comes a Ghost Dance, or, A Horse from Buffalo Bill Responds to the Assassination of Sitting Bull, and Other Instances of the Last Days of the Wild West,” I referred to Tim McCoy Remembers the West by Tim McCoy and Ronald McCoy; the Mary Collins Collection at the South Dakota State Archives; the Indian Rights Association records (online), 1830–1986, at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; Indian Rights Association Pamphlets (online), 1884–1985, Center of Southwest Studies, Fort Lewis College, Durango, Colorado; American Indian Policy in Crisis: Christian Reformers and the Indian, 1865–1900, by Francis Paul Prucha; http://nativeamericannetroots.net/diary/958 regarding Indian rights of the 1880s; poem “Omeros” by Derek Walcott (regarding Catherine Weldon); My People, the Sioux, by Luther Standing Bear; Sitting Bull College online library—www.sittingbull.edu for archive of photographs and images of Sitting Bull and other information; The Arrest and Killing of Sitting Bull by John M. Carroll; Eyewitness at Wounded Knee, by Richard E. Jensen, R. Eli Paul, and John E. Carter; Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown; A Century of Dishonor by Helen Hunt Jackson; and Buffalo Bill’s Own Story of His Life and Deeds, by William Lightfoot Visscher, who recorded his friend’s “heroic career” in his own words, as stated on the book’s cover. “Tell me a story, Buffalo Bill!” said the young boys who gathered around him in his last days. He would and then they’d say, “Tell me another.”
Finally, regarding the Ghost Dance, my phone conversation with Chief Arvol Looking Horse while I was working on this book opened up a new way of thinking about this—and my entire story. I had long thought about the legend of the horse from Buffalo Bill that was outside Sitting Bull’s cabin at the time of his killing. This was the four-legged that began dancing at the sound of gunfire as it had been trained to do while touring as Sitting Bull’s mount in the Wild West. This too was the Ghost Dance, I realized when I first learned of its occurrence, and as I said in the introduction to this book, it was an element of the story from which I could not turn away. When Chief Looking Horse suggested that it was even something more, that it was the horse metaphorically taking bullets for Sitting Bull as he was being assassinated, I had to take a moment or two, and I am still taking them, for of all the images that have come my way while writing this book—Sitting Bull’s son handing Sitting Bull’s rifle to the authorities at his father’s request; Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill meeting for the first time in Buffalo, of all places; Sitting Bull and Buffalo Bill posing for a photograph in full dress—this is the heartbeat behind the story, the trinity of the West, the two icons nearly crossing paths just before Sitting Bull died, and joined in the end by a horse that “died” along with our great Native American patriot.
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