Return of Little Big Man (63 page)

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.

The Chicago Fair opened on the first of May of ’93 and luckily the overnight rainstorm stopped in time for the procession of two dozen open carriages to make a grand entrance carrying President Grover Cleveland and a lot of other big shots including the governor of Illinois, the mayor of Chicago, and numerous other politicians, a couple Spanish ladies, one of royal blood and called an “Infant,” though she looked growed-up to me, and of all people, old Bear Coat, General Miles, who was real popular with the crowd due to having answered the Indian question at Wounded Knee. The Sioux of our troupe of course didn’t recognize him by appearance, but neither could I find any who even remembered his name. I keep telling you stuff like this to emphasize that the individual identities of even their enemies held little interest for Indians unless they had personal association with such. They never looked at life in the
general
way that when done by white people resulted in history, progress, culture—in other words, the Columbian Exposition—nor understood that the visitors thereto considered them part of the exhibition, as examples of the savagery from which superior humans had climbed up to the White City.

The opening ceremonies was held in the heart of the Fair and the single most impressive sight, the Court of Honor, a continuation of snow-white, columned, porticoed, balustraded, statued, bric-a-bracked edifices around a pool called the Basin, with an enormous sculptured figure standing in the water at the far end, which a lot of folks who hadn’t never seen the real one thought was a replica of the Statue of Liberty but wasn’t, and at the head of the pool was the high-domed Administration building behind the Columbian fountain in which a bunch of goddesses, angels, and the like rowed a stone boat with long stone oars.

There was balconies at various levels of the Administration building and it was to the highest of these that Buffalo Bill led a bunch of us from the Wild West in opening day, most of which was Sioux warriors, dressed in their feather-bonneted finery also displayed at Windsor Castle, the Eiffel Tower, and the Vatican, and from there we could look over the entire Court of Honor and beyond to where the U.S. Navy had sent battleships down Lake Michigan to salute the Fair with firing cannons, puffs of smoke followed by the booming reports, which I felt I had to explain to the Indians, fearing they might think we was being shot at.

But here was a case that reminded me they had learned some things without my help.

“I think they are shooting the same kind of blanks we use in the make-believe battle with Custer,” said Rocky Bear, “only bigger.” Then he shrugged. “Americans do strange things, but they don’t build all of this and then send war boats to blow it apart.”

I felt like a fool when he put it that way, and so as to regain authority I pointed out the ships might of been sent by an enemy.

“But
we
don’t have any boats,” said he, showing how narrow his Indian focus was and his ignorance of the greater world, unless he was having fun with me, which was entirely possible.