CHIT-CHAT AND THE DRAMA.
DURING the week, in the course of my wanderings, I found myself at the Wild West Show. It is most charmingly picturesque. With the lofty wigwams and their curious totems, the silent crimson-blanketed figures of the Indians, Red Shirt's inscrutable Napoleonic face, and the dash and vivacious "go" of the cowboys—it seemed to a staid Londoner like myself impossible to realise that one was still in this humdrum city. I had a chat with the Hon. F. Cody, who rules his people with a gentle firmness which is delightful, and saw "Buck Taylor," but as the latter cavalier told me that he had done no "housework" that morning, and felt a little diffident about the look of his tent, I forebore to plague him.
The honours of the camp were very prettily done, so far as my party were concerned, by Miss Annie Oakley "Little Sure Shot," a Western girl with quiet, expressive eyes, and a voice as soft and silvery as the rustling of a summer's breeze amongst the trees. It was quite an odd contrast, the refined English delicacy of speech of this little Diana, and the hoarse gutturals of the ochre-smeared Redskins who are her neighbours.
Title: Chit-Chat and the Drama
Periodical: The Sportsman
Source: Buffalo Bill Center of the West; MS6, William F. Cody collection, MS6.3681.004.03 (Oakley scrapbook)
Date: May 4, 1887
Topics: Buffalo Bill's Wild West in Britain
Keywords: American Indians Cowboys Firearms Indians of North America--Social life and customs Indians of North America Sharpshooters Traveling exhibitions
People: Oakley, Annie, 1860-1926 Red Shirt, 1845?-1925 Taylor, William Levi, 1857-1924
Sponsor: This project is supported in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Geraldine W. & Robert J. Dellenback Foundation.
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