Return of Little Big Man

by Thomas Berger

  Now let me say something about Germany. Wherever we went in that country, amongst the crowds, adult and children, who hung around our encampment was always a number of officers from the German Army, watching every move of ours in unloading the special train we used, setting up all our tents and tepees, cooking and feeding the troupe, and so on, and first I thought they was fixing to arrest us for not doing things the German way, which tended to be more clean and orderly than any cowboy could understand, not to mention an Indian, but Annie, who always knowed what was going on, explained that the German Army was so impressed by the way things was handled by B.B.W.W. that they was going to copy the procedures for themselves. “If you notice, they’re writing it all down in their notebooks.”

  Then we went to Holland and Belgium and across the water to Great Britain again, performing all over the country including Wales and Scotland, where the speech of the local folks was so hard to understand it made the language spoke by the English almost clear.

  Speaking of communicating across barriers, one of the most unusual examples of it I ever seen happened in Glasgow that winter, where we give some indoor performances. Cody had went back to North Platte for a couple months to deal with the management of his ranch and to quarrel with his wife, Lulu, and I was relieved he never invited me along for a change, for after the incident with Sitting Bull I was happy to stay amongst foreigners.

  Anyhow, Cody’s absence would mean a big loss, for though beginning to turn gray and putting on a paunch, he still participated actively in every performance, recapturing the Deadwood Mail Coach from the Indians, arriving too late to save Custer, and so on, along with the marksmanship exhibition, shooting glass balls from horseback.

  A fellow name of Lew Parker, who was booking talent for the show at the time, got the bright idea of hiring a bunch of trained elephants and if that wasn’t enough, he borrowed some members of the black Zulu tribe which that man Stanley, who found Dr. Livingstone in the middle of Africa, had brung on exhibition to Europe.

  Now of course it didn’t take no time for the newspaper people to want the two kinds of savages, Zulus and Sioux, to be put together for pictures, and when that happened, and them tall, fit specimens of the African warrior, with headbands, claw necklaces, and lots of blue-black skin met the Indians in their feather bonnets and beads, a Scotch reporter says it was a pity they couldn’t converse together and maybe compare the Zulu victory over the British Army, that Prince Bertie had mentioned previously, with the whipping the Sioux give Custer.

  I never cared to make a joke of it, having witnessed the latter, but I thought I’d try something.

  I says to Rocky Bear, one of our Lakota, “Why don’t you see if you can talk to these black people in the signs?”

  He nodded, eagle feathers waving, and says, “I’ll speak to them.” And he starts to talk in sign language, asking the husky fellow who seemed to be their leader them traditional Indian questions on meeting a stranger: “Where are you going?” and “What do you want?” Followed by “Do you want to eat?”

  And by golly if the Zulu didn’t immediately comprehend and signal back reasonable answers, which under the circumstances didn’t need to be literal but just polite acknowledgments, and the two continued to converse for a while not about fighting whites but on such simple topics as the bad weather in Scotland, their children, the kind of meat they preferred, and so on, for the signs wasn’t made for complicated sentiments.

  Cody come back in the spring, and the Wild West returned to London where we had not been since the Jubilee year of ’87, and while that excitement could not be repeated the season was greatly successful and Queen Victoria, who was older than ever but still on the throne, invited us to do another command performance at Windsor Castle.

  I didn’t look forward to joining the Prince of Wales in his frolics, considering myself too old now for such, but wouldn’t of knowed how to get out of it if asked, for it was Bertie’s country, of which he might at any minute become king, so was relieved when one of his queeries got me aside to say His Royal Highness sent regrets to Captain Crabb but wouldn’t be able to see him this time for reasons of state. And then this fellow, a cheerier sort than most English of the official kind, winks and says to me something about another prince called Hal who become king and couldn’t see a fellow named Falstaff no more. I never understood this reference, but maybe Bertie was expecting too soon to get the crown. His Ma lasted another nine years! By the way, him and me was both the same age, but I don’t know if he ever really settled down after he got the throne, and it probably didn’t matter if he did, the poor fellow having grown so old waiting to become king, he croaked only a few years after he finally got there.

  So we had another successful season in England, but by the time the fall come many in the troupe was homesick and welcomed the announcement that B.B.W.W. was heading back to the U.S.A., where we had not performed since ’88. I wasn’t personally thrilled by the prospect of returning, but neither did I want to remain in Europe on my own, maybe hooking up with one of the imitation Western shows, usually down-at-the-heels, which wandered around the Continent, especially Germany, living on Cody’s scraps you might say.

  Now here was Buffalo Bill’s plans for the following spring: He was taking the Wild West to the Chicago World’s Fair. I was glad he had found a new place for a spectacle, for nothing bucked him up more. He needed to reclaim his notable get-up-and-go, being in a current down-in-the-mouth state that was unusual for him, maybe because he unaccountably took up teetotaling on his return to England, even refusing a glass at Windsor Castle, and when Arizona John Burke told the press, Bill was commended publicly by the Salvation Army, who of course was fine people, but to be praised by them wasn’t exactly swashbuckling glamour.

  I myself, for the reason indicated, wasn’t that keen on going home, much as I admired America over any other country I ever seen regardless of the palaces and castles, on account of it was mine, but at least we wouldn’t be locating at New York, which was the last address I had for Amanda.

  I haven’t mentioned yet that she wrote me a couple letters during the first year of the European tour, sending them to “Mr. Jack Crabb, care of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West,” which meant they was delivered quickly to our encampment, no matter the country, for there wasn’t no better-known attraction on earth. It was in the original letter she told me about arriving in New York, and says she missed me, which lifted my heart till I read on and seen that was mainly because there was so much information I could of furnished her, also that without me her lessons in Lakota had not continued.

  In the end I felt worse than if I hadn’t heard from her at all, and the reasons for not writing back had multiplied. So all I done by way of answer was to put the money I had borrowed in an envelope addressed to her, along with a note thanking her kindly for the loan. A couple months later she wrote again, acknowledging receipt of the money but chiding me amiably for not writing more of a letter in accompaniment, repeating how useful I could be to her if only by mail, and this time asking a number of specific questions, such as what was the dowry a Hunkpapa girl was expected to bring when she got married, and was there any limit to how many wives a Lakota warrior might have at one time and must they always be sisters?

  I’ll tell you, I tried to put my selfish feelings aside at least long enough to furnish the requested information, for I wished Amanda well with her book, but if I couldn’t write good to begin with, I was ten times worse when I tried now. I couldn’t even find an opening sentence that made sense. “Dear Amanda, in reply to yours of the 11th instant let me assure you of my estimation in the highest...” “Kindly excuse my epistolary degeneracies...” “Asseverations to the contrary withstanding...” I won’t even go into how this stuff was spelled, and not having much experience with pen and ink, I did a lot of spattering on some words and accidental smearings with my shirt cuff or heel of hand. In point of fact, I sent no reply whatever.

  That had been a year and a half earlier. She
never wrote again. I can still to this day remember how sad I was about the whole situation at that time. One advantage of living so long is being able to take the long view when looking back.

  Now this World’s Fair was actually called the Columbian Exposition after the Italian explorer working for Spain, Columbus, Colombo, Colon, who got credit for finding America though the Indians hadn’t yet lost it and he never reached the mainland whereas Vikings done so earlier, and finally the place was named not for him but for still another Italian who never set foot on the continent that become the home of the U.S.A. Yet it wasn’t the Leif Ericson or the Amerigo Vespucci Exposition. Also, as the four hundredth anniversary of the first Atlantic crossing on the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, it was a year late, for as could be expected with any American enterprise, there was a lot of differences amongst all parties concerned. But I’ll say this, when it finally opened it was a wonder.

  Though the most popular feature connected with the Fair was Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World, as it was now called, being more descriptive of a troupe including Cossacks and the rest, we was never officially invited to go there nor was we permitted to set up on either the grounds of the Fair proper or even the strip of property a mile long running at a right angle to the higher-minded main exposition, known as the Midway Plaisance, which by the way give its name to every carnival midway thereafter though without the French word for “pleasure” which turned out not to be required at the original site, for attractions like the gigantic Ferris wheel and Little Egypt’s hootchie-cootchie dance was self-evident.

  The reason why the Wild West weren’t welcomed by the Fair was they considered it to be mere entertainment for profit, with all the riding and shooting, whereas they had set up Indian exhibits of their own, intended to have educational value as demonstrations of primitive life as opposed to the civilized accomplishments on display at the Columbian Exposition, the main part of which had acquired the name White City for not only the obvious reason but also that most of the buildings was covered with a French plaster so white it hurt your eyes in the glare of the full sun.

  But having been welcomed at Victoria’s Jubilee and the Paris exposition, Cody was determined not to be euchred out of his place in the premier blowout his own country had to offer, so Nate Salsbury, who had a genius for managing and arranging that matched Bill’s for showmanship, come up with an idea that probably worked out better than being admitted to the actual Fair ever could of: he leased an entire block of city land so near the entrance to the Fair that whoever arrived at the latter by whatever form of locomotion had to pass Buffalo Bill’s Wild West—and I tell you few did without coming in to see us. I heard there was a lot of people who never went further, and after a performance of ours returned home thinking they had experienced the important part of the Columbian Exposition without seeing nothing else.

  I don’t want to knock the Fair though, for when I say it was a wonder I mean it, and as you are aware, by then I had seen a good deal of what the world had to offer, insofar as the attractions of Western Europe went, and as a native-born American I was real proud of the great display on the shore of Lake Michigan, where within a year they built as many palaces in one place as probably all the Europeans had done together in centuries, a huge shining white building for every different type of human endeavor, Agriculture, Electricity, Transportation, you name it, and inside these was examples of the latest products or processes in that field, like huge machines running at full speed, or in Mining a statue of Justice made of solid silver from Montana, which also had a banner bragging that more copper was mined there than anywhere else in the country, a fact that despite my own association with that territory, nearly having been killed there on the Little Bighorn, I had never heard of before, which shows you the educational value of the Fair.

  And there was considerably more. Most of the civilized countries of the world had buildings of their own, Germany and Spain and France and all, and there was even foreign places to take refreshment like the Polish Cafe, the Swedish Restaurant, and the Japanese Tea House. Then most of the American states and territories had each its own pavilion in which to put their best face forward, showing what they growed or manufactured. In between and around the buildings, throughout the grounds, was water everyplace you looked, with ponds and basins and canals and in the middle of all was a big lagoon surrounding a wooded island containing among other things real unusual Japanese houses called Ho-o-dens with high peaked roofs that swooped down then turned up again at the eaves. Then there was fountains everywhere, some called “electric” since they was illuminated at night, but so was the outsides of them white buildings, along with extra searchlights, and the result was a nighttime glare that rivaled high noon.

  And you had all of Lake Michigan right there offshore, looking big as an ocean, and some of the visitors arrived by steamer. There was a good deal of boating on the internal waterways of the Fair itself, with electric or steam launches and real gondolas, poled by actual Italians, like the one me, Cody, and the Indians rode in Venice.

  Then there was several historical vessels, or reproductions thereof, at anchor in the South Inlet: them three ships of Columbus’, towed over from Spain, along with a Viking boat of the kind in which the Scandinavians claimed their forefathers preceded Chris: the Norwegians actually had sailed this full-size model across from the Old Country. By the way, them ships, Norse or Spanish, was tiny: you had to hand it to those who would go to sea in the old days, not knowing what was on the other side if there even was one. I’d sooner face any human enemy no matter how badly outnumbered or underarmed, for there was always a chance, slim though it might be, to bluff your way out. Having sailed across the Atlantic several times by now in the latest type of steamship, I ain’t never felt so helpless as when suspended in sheer water, with the same element on every side for many days in every direction, and that in calm weather.

  Well, I could go on about the marvels of the Fair, but all of them have been exceeded many times in the years since, so if somebody from today was magically transported back there it would all seem pretty quaint as to the technology that then was new. Mind you, no one arrived by airplane or even automobile, or listened to news on the radio, let alone TV, et cetera, et cetera, the wondrous devices of that day being the telephone of the American Bell Company, which could call from Chicago to New York, and T. A. Edison’s Kinetoscope, an early form of movies, viewed from a peephole only one person could look through at a time.

  This I considered something worth waiting for, so joined the long line in the Electricity Building and to pass the time during the considerable wait chewed the fat with the skinny young fellow just behind me, and he turned out to be real knowledgeable about a lot of the electric exhibits in the place, and specifically of those, like the improved phonograph, of Tom Edison, for he worked as an engineer at the Edison Illuminating Company in Detroit, though he had not yet had a chance to view the Kinetoscope.

  He was real patriotic, reminding me of Cody in that, though this fellow put his emphasis on mechanics, machinery, electric power, and so on rather than riding and shooting, and when he warmed to the subject he told me something I found hard to swallow even standing there in this temple of technology: that one of these days an American was going to build a carriage that run by itself, that is, without a horse to pull it. And when though trying to be polite I looked dubious, he said he knowed what he was talking about, for the American who was going to do it, says he, was himself. But then he frowned and added something he never got a chance to explain further, for right at that point came my turn at the Kinetoscope, and I tell you it was awe-inspiring at that time to watch pictures of moving persons and things, like the prizefighter J. J. Corbett and the well-known dancer Carmencita, along with walking elephants and other animals, so I never got a chance to talk further with this fellow, who when we had exchanged handshakes introduced himself by the name of Henry Ford.

  The remark he made was
an expression of worry that his work on the horseless carriage might be stole by an international conspiracy of Jews plotting to take over the world. I had been going to invite Ford to come see Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, but in case my old Pa was right, that the Indians comprise the lost tribes of Israel, I refrained from doing so.

  There was also all kinds of art at the Fair, both inside and outdoors. All I have to do is look at an oil painting or a marble statue and I am rendered speechless, so don’t expect me to expose my ignorance on the subject, though on the European tours I had looked at quite a bit of art, so didn’t confuse the best kind with the picture of the half-naked woman a lot of saloons hung over the bar for drunks to slaver over. On the other hand, according to what I seen across the water, the real serious artists never passed up a naked lady either, especially if she had a lot of flesh on her.

  Anyhow, at the Fair there was outdoor statues of men, women, gods and goddesses, horses, eagles, polar bears, and other critters real and imagined, and of course Chris Columbus, everywhere you looked, and many of the stone ladies wasn’t wearing shirts. How they got away with this when young kids was admitted to the grounds, I can’t say, but I didn’t approve, and I can tell you this: neither did the Indians, though by now them with B.B.W.W. had seen enough of cities to know how low white morals was.

  As many sculptures as was outdoors in the middle of fountains, all over the fronts of buildings and atop the roofs, lining walkways, posted at either end of the bridges and all along the railings, you name it, there was even more inside the buildings, and finally the biggest collection of all, counting paintings, could be found in an enormous place called the Palace of Fine Arts: no less than nine thousand pieces of work from all over the world. It was a revelation to me, more than anything in Europe, where you could expect them to have a lot of culture, having worked at it since Year One. This was my own country, and I for one was real proud of it, given all the time I had put in in the likes of Deadwood, Dodge, and Tombstone.