The William F. Cody Archive: Documenting the life and times of Buffalo Bill

 

ScrapBook

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THREE GREAT FIGURES OF OLD WESTERN FRONTIER IN PICTURE

 

COMING EAST

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Buffalo Bill and H. H. Tammen snapt on the station platform at Kansas City

Col. Cody will be formally [invested?] with the honors and dignities of membership in the Sells-Floto Shows, in Detroit, on Labor Day. Mr. Tammen will preside at the ceremony, which will be quite a [function?] .

BUFFALO BILL IN "MOVIES"

VENERABLE SCOUT WILL REPRODUCE BEFORE CAMERAS ALL BIG BATTLES OF THE PLAINS IN WHICH HE PARTICIPATED.

Colonel Cody, F. G. Bonfils and H. H. Tammen have incorporated the Col. W. F. Cody Buffalo Bill Historical Picture Co. Interested with the above named in the project is George K. Spoor of the Essanay Film Mfg. Co., a contract with the Essanay company for the producing of the films having been closed on Wednesday.

Fifty thousand dollars cash has been subscribed as a working capital, but it is expected that the total cost of the series of films will greatly exceed this amount, as expense is not to be considered in the undertaking.

It is the intention of the Col. W. F. Cody Buffalo Bill Historical Film Co., to reproduce the biggest Indian battle scenes on a greater scale than heretofore attempted including the last stand of the Cheyennes, the battles of the Wounded Knee, the Little Big Horn, the Mission and all other big engagements in which Colonel Cody took part.

The Essanay company now have some of their men at Cody, Wyo., and they will take pictures of Cody's home life, Prince Monaco's hunting trip with Colonel Cody, western sports, etc.

Colonel Cody and the moving picture outfit will start on October 1 for the Pine Ridge Agency, where the big battle scenes will be reproduced. The help of practically all of the important officers, and others who are alive who played a real part in the battles has been assured, as well as that of hundreds of Indians and soldiers. Newspaper representative [sic] from nearly every important paper in the country have been invited and it is expected that many will attend.

BUFFALO BILL

By Walt Mason.

(Copyright 1912 By George Matthew Adams.)

They've taken down the great gray tents, the Injuns and imported gents who lately robbed the Deadwood bus are on their uppers now, or wuss; where late rough rode and swore [...?] bucking bronchos buck no more. Bill's stunt is done and we shall know his face no more in tented show. Alas, that in his wintry years, disaster in his path appears! Of pioneers about the last, he links the present to the past. Before our thrifty cities rose, he tracked and fought the settlers' foes, and showed the path, o'er lonely plains, to long and creaking wagon trains; both guide and guard, he led the van, in war or peace a mighty man. With big, brave heart and noble face, a form with tiger's strength and grace, a soul as true as was his aim, and mind as broad as was his fame, of all the heroes of the West, Bill Cody is beloved the best. Oh, hero of our boyhood days! Oh, Bayard of the frontier ways! The world grows sordid in pursuit of stocks and bonds and other loot; and all we hear along the pike is talk of mergers and the like; and you bring back a wholesome thought of things too apt to be forgot; of daytime treks and night alarms and stalwart men's appeals to arms, of men who gave their blood to buy the land whereon our mansions lie, of vistas fresh and great and still — and so God bless you, Buffalo Bill!

"Buffalo Bill" to Feature in Historical Moving Pictures

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The announcement that William F. Cody ("Buffalo Bill") is arranging to reproduce, in moving pictures, the early Western scenes, is hailed with delight by the American public, which never tires of accounts of the thrilling events that make up the history of what was once known as the Wild West.

The introduction of moving pictures into historical records means that a vivid understanding of what really happened will be handed down to future generations. What the eye sees the brain retains to a greater degree than words can convey.

What the West is today is largely due to the hardships and dangers suffered in the early days by the sturdy pioneers most of whom have passed away. Among the famous characters whom our historians depict, none had a more spectacular career, nor became more famous than Buffalo Bill. It is for this reason that in these days of peace and prosperity we are fortunate to still have with us this noted character, and that he is hale and hearty and able to re-live, for historical purposes, the scenes that were possible only to the energetic, brave, strong pioneers who struggled with a wild, untamed territory in order to pass down to posterity a land rich in all that goes to make man a home of contentment and plenty.

This undertaking is not an ordinary moving picture enterprise. No movie actors will be employed, but the original characters will enact the scenes on the very spot where the events occurred. These pictures will live forever as the most wonderful historical records of all time.

According to telegrams from General Miles the days of Indian fighting and border warfare will be represented by practically every living man of importance connected with the winning of the West. There will be in addition to General Miles, Brig. Gen. Marion P. Maus, now in command of the Department of the Columbia; Brig. Gen. Frank D. Baldwin, Maj. Gen. George M. Randall, Maj. Gen. Jesse M. Lee, Maj. Gen. Charles F. Humphrey, Maj. Gen. Charles King, Maj. Guy Preston and possibly William A. Strunk, now stationed in command at Chicago; troops of American soldiers and bands of real Indians.

Realizing the great importance of this enterprise, marking, as it does, an era in historical records, Denver Weekly Post has arranged to send a personal representative to the scene where the pictures will be taken to secure for this paper photographs and accounts of what occurs. These stories and pictures will be reproduced in future issues, and in themselves will constitute history worth saving. The first pictures and stories will appear in the next few weeks. Watch for them.

 

GENERAL MILES SURVEYS FIELD WHERE SIOUX MAKE LAST STAND

Four Veterans Prepare for The Moving Picture Pageant.

Auto Instead of Faithful Horse Bears Them to Summit.

(By RYLEY COOPER.)

Rushville, Neb., Oct. 11 — The moving of the great motion picture camp from the battlefield of Wounded Knee has been completed and today will begin the second of the historical series depicting the fatal end of the Indian wars, brought about through the sagacity of Lieut.-Gen. Nelson A. Miles, who is present to direct the taking of the pictures.

Yesterday afternoon General Miles, with Theodore Wharton, stage manager of the great production, went over the ground of the final surrender on the battlefield of the missions and other places which figured in the ending of the wars, that every detail might be freshly covered and easy of access in the taking of the pictures. All day yesterday, too, the generals who have gathered here — Major-General Lee, Brigadier-General King, Brigadier-General Maus and Brigadier-General Baldwin — talked of the events which came at the ending of the wars, and discussed with the director the details so that everything might be historically correct.

The taking of the pictures here will occupy ten days or two weeks. Every feature in the surrender of the Sioux, the delivering of hostages and the signing of the treaty for eternal peace will be reproduced exactly as it happened twenty-three years ago.

FOUR HORSEMEN JOURNEYED FORTH.

More than twenty years ago, just when the sun was setting, there journeyed forth from Pine Ridge four men on horseback. Silently they rode along to the ridge of a great hill. Then, dismounting, they stood and looked into the valley until the shades of dusk warned them of [photo] The Hotchkiss gun, known to Indians as the gun which shoots today and kills tomorrow. It was this type of gun which won peace from the Indians. the need for the lights and fellowship of the agency.

And it was not to look upon the landscape that they climbed the great hill, nor was it to admire the winding shimmer of White Clay creek, curving its way among the hills below. They went there upon a purpose of war — to look upon the enemy below and to wonder where and when it all would end, whether these men in the valley would submit to civilization or follow the wild dictates [photo] Colonel Cody on his first visit to camp meets Old Flat Iron, an Indian scout. of a religious frenzy which taught them the doctrine of driving the white man out of the West forever.

Today you call these four Lieut.-Gen. Nelson A. Miles, Brig.-Gen. Frank D. Baldwin, Brig.-Gen. Marion P. Maus and Col. William F. Cody.

But in those days General Baldwin and General Maus were lower in station than they are today. Colonel Cody was Buffalo Bill, chief of scouts, and General Miles carried upon his shoulders the weight of the great Indian problems of the West.

NOW AND THEN THEY HEARD BEAT OF TOM-TOM.

And that is why they journeyed to the top of the hill at sunset. Below them, stretching away in the horizon, showed tepee after tepee of hostile Indians. Now and then would come the sound of the tom-tom and demonstrations that might mean in the end an attack on the agency and the death of hundreds. Those were the days when all was turmoil, when the preachings and the incantations of the messiah at Pyramid Lake had given forth the order that the white man must disappear and the West be turned into the hunting grounds of the Indians. Those were the days of worry and of warfare and of bloodshed. And in those days, at sunset, four men would ride to the top of the hill to reconnoiter.

Many things have happened since then. The two men who served on the staff of General Miles then have become generals themselves in lower station.

The colonel has seen many a part of the world. Wars have intervened. The domain of the United States has spread out into the ocean. Vicissitudes, happiness and sorrows, have come to all of them. The years have piled up — up — up, bringing with them a succession of events which would seem to preclude their ever coming together again. Twenty years and more is a long time —

FOUR MEN AGAIN JOURNEYED FORTH.

And yet, the other evening at sunset, four men journeyed forth from Pine Ridge toward the top of a great hill nearby. Their hair was white, the mode of travel was an automobile instead of the horses of the past. And when they reached the top of the hill, only a pretty valley, where a stream curved complacently between the trees showed beneath them. The warpaint and bedaubed tepees of the hostiles were gone. Far below, on the other side, stood forth the Indian agency in the dying sunlight, the flag fluttering from the staff, a few Indians in modern dress lounging about the doorway. The warlike days were over — over for everyone except those four men who stood atop the hill, looking into the valley.

For to them the years had rolled away. The vacant valley once again was ablaze with the fires of the Indian camps. Once again there was the activity, the barking of dogs, the shouts of children as they ran here and there. Once again shone the painted forms of Indians as they strode about the place, the circles of the councils as the chiefs gathered for conferences. Once again came the beating of the tom-toms — the indications of hostility. They stood and watched, silently.

FAR BELOW CLANGED EVENING CHURCH BELL.

From far behind, in the little Dakota town, there sounded the clanging of an evening church bell, from the tower of the little edifice of worship where stood Army's store in the days of battle, calling them back to the present, reminding them that days had changed, that the years had brought transformation, that the crack of the rifle and the war cry of the Indian was gone forever. Lieutenant General Miles turned and looked about him.

"It was just about here that Capron's battery stood, wasn't it?" he asked.

"Just about," came the answer of General Baldwin.

"A good battery, a mighty effective bunch of artillery," came in reminiscent tones from Buffalo Bill.

"A very good battery," echoed General Miles.

And with the honking of the motor car they turned again toward town.

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Gen. Baldwin Looks Over the Battlefield.

CHIEFS OF ARMY REFIGHT INDIAN WARS IN MOVIES

Gen. Miles, Col. Cody and Others See War Waged on Picture Screen

WILSON TO SEE THEM.

"They Are Historically Correct," Comment of Retired Head of Army.

Chicago, Jan. 22 — Time turned in its flight a quarter of a century today, and a score of gray-haired military chiefs, from every part of the country, watched themselves fighting again the last of the Indian wars, leading the charge, routing the red-painted savages and closing an epoch in history.

There was Gen. Nelson A. Miles in the audience, silent and erect, watching Gen. Nelson A. Miles revisiting the front following the grand surrender.

There was Colonel Shunk in the audience, intent and interested, watching Colonel Sickels skirmishing over the Battle of Wounded Knee.

And General Stewart and Colonel Kingsbury, eyes half closed, while the stirring scenes before them passed their minds, more clearly perhaps than on the screen were there.

"BUFFALO BILL" CHIEF FIGURE.

But the figure that sat the straightest and watched the closest was the figure of Col. William F. Cody, "Buffalo Bill," part owner of the films, which he assisted in preparing for the archives of the war department in Washington.

It was the first exhibition of the William F. Cody historical pictures by which will be preserved the history of the country in the moving picture film. They will be shown next week before President Wilson and Secretary of War Garrison.

The exhibition today was given in the rooms of the Essanay company. After the arrival of the notables the place was darkened. The war of the Bad Lands was flashed on the screen, and the click click of the movie machine arose.

ARMY CHIEFS AUDIENCE.

In the audience were Generals Miles, Baldwin, Wheaton, King, Stewart, Colonels Shunk, Baker, Kingsbury, McCarthy, Kimball and McDonald; Major Ray, Captain Billingsleg, Cylde Vry, H. H. Cruss, W. L. Parks, Milward Adams, F. G. Bonfils, Colonel Cody and Lou [Houstermann?] .

Before the gaze of the army veterans was flashed the famous Bad Lands of the Dakotas and over the hills in the distance were riding again the regulars led by the self-same heroes who fought in the original uprising, and most of them were present in the room. Scene followed scene from the Bad Lands scuffle to the territory that witnessed the battles in the war of the Messiah.

BATTLE OF WOUNDED KNEE.

"Now we're coming to the battle of Wounded Knee," whispered Buffalo Bill.

On the screen the Sioux braves sitting on the ground suddenly sprang to their feet.

A volley blazed out from their weapons. The battle followed, advance, retreat, the Indians finally driven into the ravine of Wounded Knee, fighting every inch of the way, with the army chiefs in the room leaning forward in their chairs, as interested as any of them were a quarter of a century ago.

When the battle finally was over another reel was put on. General Miles tugged at his white mustache and smiled severely.

"They're historically correct," he said. "Just as they happened."

"Seems like yesterday," Buffalo Bill chuckled.

 

The Classic Event in Motion Picture Annals — First Ever U. S. Government Endorsed. The Capital's Social Sensation.

THE BUFFALO BILL FILM CO.

OPENS AT MATINEE, 3 P. M., SUNDAY, MARCH 8, AT

TABOR GRAND OPERA HOUSE

FOR ONE WEEK — TWICE DAILY — EVERY AFT. AT 2:15 — EVERY NIGHT, 8:15

Present History Re-Enacted by the Makers.

INDIAN WARS IN THE WEST VISUALIZED

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W. F. Cody "Buffalo Bill."

These pictures have the transcendent merit of being presented by veteran participants thus having the value of AUTHENTICITY, PERSONALITY, FAITHFUL PORTRAYAL WITH GOVERNMENTAL APPROVAL of effective collated episodes of TRAILING, FINDING, FIGHTING — IN SKIRMISH and BATTLE — directed in detail by those who witnessed and were engaged in the Melees, assisted by all the SKILL AND INGENUITY THE ESSANAY COMPANY EXPERTS COULD DEVISE — in simply reproducing events in the last days OF THE LAST THREE DECADES of the CENTURIES OF BATTLE BETWEEN THE RED AND WHITE MAN FROM THE SANGUINARY CAMPAIGNS OF THE '60s — the General E. A. Carr victory at Summitt Springs in 1869, when Scout Cody killed Chief Tall Bull; of the '70s — the bloody fight at War Bonnet Creek in 1876 (Custer's Campaign), in which Buffalo Bill, in personal duel, dispatched Chief Yellow Hand.

The death of CHIEF SITTING BULL to the GHOST DANCE, continental-wide rebellion craze.

THE INDIANS' LAST STAND — WOUNDED KNEE and THE MISSION, 1890 and 1891 — tragic deaths of Captain Wallace, Lieutenant Mann, wounding of Lieutenants Gurlington, Hawthorne, McKimie and Father Craft.

Depicted on the actual battle ground, with the living personages who cover a half century of the story, ably and mutely, repeating it with realistic vividness, as it then was — thus adding LIFE BLOOD TO ART.

ECHOES FROM PINE RIDGE — REELS OF REAL HISTORY FILMS — NOTED MEN IN NATIONAL NARRATIVE — THE OLD GUARD IN THE SADDLE LED BY THAT DISTINGUISHED CIVIL FRONTIER AND SPANISH WAR BATTLE VETERAN-SOLDIER

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Nelson A. Miles

Lieut. Gen. Nelson A. Miles (retired) was commander in field in the Ghost Dance was of 1890-91, achieved the surrender at Pine Ridge, and was present and supervised this re-enactment.

MAJOR GENERAL JESSE M. LEE, MAJOR GENERAL CHARLES KING, BRIGADIER GENERAL FRANK BALDWIN, BRIGADIER GENERAL MARION P. MAUS, COLONEL H. C. SICKLES (7th U. S. Cavalry in its Campaign now present on the old battlefields), leading and assisting with THE GALLANT 12th U. S. REGULAR CAVALRY.

The Red men following now as then, the teachings of CHIEF SHORT BULL. The MESSIAH MEDICINE MAN with leading warriors of RED CLOUD SIOUX INDIANS, with that FAMOUS FACTOR IN PLAINS' HISTORY, THE LAST OF THE GREAT SCOUTS, COLONEL W. F. CODY ("BUFFALO BILL"). SIX MILES OF REELS OF REALISTIC PHOTODRAMA, PORTRAYING STIRRING, YET EDIFYING FACTS IN FRONTIER HISTORY TO THE CLOSING CHAPTER in A THREE HUNDRED YEAR COVERING DRAMA — WITH THE FINAL — FOREVER — INDIAN PIPE PEACE CONGRESS of GENERAL MILES, GRAND AMITY COUNCIL, burying the hatchet, smoking the Calumet and CEMENTING ETERNALLY BROTHERLY FRIENDSHIP.

NOTE — The taking of these pictures was by official permission of a Government Commission headed by Secretary of War Garrison, Secretary of the Interior Lane, Maj. Gen. Leonard Wood, under the guidance of the distinguished film promoters, Mr. Geo. K. Spoor, president Essanay Company, and his producer, Mr. P. O. Wharton.

 

OFFICIALS THRILLED BY REALISTIC FILMS OF INDIAN BATTLES

Colonel Cody Holds Audience Spellbound As He Explains Pictures.

REAL HISTORY REPEATED

Actual Scenes Seem to Flash Before People As Lens Projects Them.

Washington, D. C., Feb. 28 — Official Washington, including members of the cabinet, senators, representatives, chiefs of all departments, tonight fixed their sign of approval on the moving pictures telling the story of historical Indian battles, which were taken under the direction of Col. W. F. Cody.

The private exhibition of these marvelous reels was given at the Home Club, which is a social organization of the interior department, under the patronage of Secretary Lane. His was the idea that the exhibition be given in order that the president and all of officialdom might have a chance to see the wonderful educational value of the pictures, as his was the order by which the Indians were assembled on the Pine Ridge reservation, the scene of those battles that closed 200 years of savagery and brought the red man into friendly relations with his white conqueror.

SECRETARY GARRISON EQUALLY INTERESTED.

As head of the army Secretary Garrison equally had been interested in preserving to posterity the vivid records of the accomplishments of the troopers. Both Secretaries Lane and Garrison expressed the deepest satisfaction with the pictures, declaring them to be historically correct in every detail. Secretary Garrison placed troops of the federal cavalry at the disposal of Colonel Cody, and thus to him, as to Secretary Lane, is due much of the credit for these historical documents by which the past ever will be kept alive to those who people the present and the future.

The big feature of the exhibition last night was Colonel Cody, who was introduced by Secretary Lane as the man whose enterprises and genius have given to future generations vivid historical features of great events in the conquest of the West.

Colonel Cody, lithe as youth, straight as the arrows that have whizzed about his noble head on many a hard-fought battlefield, waited until the cheers of greeting subsided and looked with his bright eyes over an audience as distinguished as any he had ever beheld. The National Press club was sponsor for the entertainment and the most noted journalists in the country were present. Sitting here and there in the hall Colonel Cody spied out many of the old Indian fighters who gave him a salvo of applause, then settled to watch the great story unrolled.

Before the lights went out, however, Senator Warren of Wyoming stepped to the platform to say an emphasizing word as to the educational and historical value of the pictures and rail a glowing tribute to Colonel Cody.

"I want to present to your favorable nature," he said, "one of the young men of the young state of Wyoming. He is one of my constituents and while a young man he probably is the oldest and most distinguished of pioneers in America — if not in the world."

"It has been my object and my desire," answered Colonel Cody, in response, "to preserve history by the aid of the camera, with the living participants who took an active part in the closing Indian wars of America. I first preached this subject to Secretary of War Garrison and Secretary of the Interior Lane. They gave me permission for the taking of the pictures on the condition that they would be made historically correct, showing the Indian wars and savagery of the Indian and following his progress to the present time.

LANE AUTHORIZED GATHERING OF INDIANS.

Secretary Garrison gave permission for the United States troops to participate in this expedition, and Secretary Lane authorized the mobilization of such Indians as were required for this purpose.

Into a perfect stillness born of great interest Colonel Cody told of how the pictures were the silent witnesses of trailing, finding, fighting; of skirmishes and battles which left traces of blood and conflict over thirty years of our nation's history.

"There is the thrilling victory of General E. A. Carr at Summit Springs in 1869," said Cody in that stirring voice of his. "There I took human life when Chief Tall Bull proved the weaker man of us two.

"Then there is the fight of the War Bonnet with Generals Wesley Merritt and E. Carr's famous ride of '75 made to intercept the Ogallala and Brule Sioux from helping Sitting Bull. There, in a hand to hand duel, I dispatched Chief Yellow Hand to the happy hunting grounds from which he never returned to say what he found there."

Telling of this battle, where soldiers dripped with Indians' blood and Indians washed their hands in soldiers' gore, Cody had the audience spellbound.

Colonel H. C. Stickles and General Nelson A. Miles, with Cody in these campaigns, seemed to live them again in the unrolling films.

"After this," continued Cody, "the Ghost Dance and the Death of Sitting Bull give a high light to another epoch-making incident in our warfare with the Indian.

"Then comes the last stand in the battle of the Wounded Knee and the Mission in 1890. There Captain Wallace, a brave soldier, and Lieutenant Mann, another whose record was without stain, gave their lives. We saw Lieutenants Gurlington, Hawthorne, McKinzie and Father Craft, who never knew fear, go down under the wounding knives and arrows and guns of the red men.

"And having been an actor in these early wars, having played my part with all the courage that was in me, courage kept warm and burning by my love of my country and my hope of a better day, when all men shall stand as brothers under a common flag. I know that the pictures you look at tonight are true to life. They were taken on the actual battleground; they were taken under bright or gray skies, such as lowered or gleamed on those days; they were commanded by men who commanded then and the children of tomorrow and the men and women of today, in these pictures, have history true, faithful, reliable. Lieut. Gen. Nelson Miles — the great "Bear Coat" — leads today as he led when we were trying to force back the frontier. Then, as now, we knew in him the brave pacificator. Maj. Gen. Jesse M. Lee, Maj. Gen. Charles King, Brig. Gen. Frank Baldwin, Brig. Gen. Marion P. Maus, Colonel Sickles, leading and assisting the gallant Twelfth U. S. cavalry appear.

SIX MILES OF FILM USED FOR PICTURES.

"Then, as now, the red men followed the teachings of Chief Short Bull. Now, as then, we see the Messiah Medicine Man, with the leading warriors of the Red Cloud Sioux.

"And to bring this story out of the past to you of the present, clear, authentic, wonderful, we have used six miles of reels and written a period on three hundred years of hate, antagonism, injustice, heroism, bloodshed, misunderstanding."

Colonel Cody's story of how he gained the services of his old comrades proved no less interesting than his brief narrative of the battles he has fought. The concluding scenes portraying the progress made by the Indians at Pine Ridge and Lawton agencies forms a striking contrast to earlier scenes in which all the red men are shown in savagery. In these last scenes the department chiefs find their justification for being employed by the government to bring the Indian to a new understanding of himself and his place among the citizens of the nation.

COL. CODY SUPERVISES EXHIBITON OF INDIAN WAR FILMS IN CAPITAL

Washington, Feb. 17 — Col. William F. Cody (Buffalo Bill) has been here several days hobnobbing with many of his retired old-time army officer friends for whom he scouted and led in the fierce fighting days of the frontier Indian wars.

The main purpose of his visit at this time is to supervise private exhibitions of the frontier motion pictures taken under the auspices of the war and interior departments in South Dakota and other far West points, last fall. These films show the reproduction of the famous Indian wars of pioneer days. The settings for the pictures have been accepted as historically correct and the films are to be preserved by the government in the archives of the Indian and war departments for the education of future generations.

FAMOUS GENERALS BECOME FILM HEROES.

General Miles, Gen. J. M. Lee, General M. D. Baldwin, General Maus, Gen. Charles King, Colonel Sickles, Colonel Cody and other notable United States army men who participated in the historical Indian battles of the earlier days in the Rocky Mountain regions were the principals in the recently taken moving pictures.

"These pictures depict, among other battles, that of Summit Springs in 1869," Colonel Cody explained to a party of newspaper writers who are to witness a private exhibition of the pictures today. "Gen. C. A. Carr was in command of the government troops and I had the honor to be his chief of scouts.

"It was General Carr," he recalled, "who ridded Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado of the desperate 'Dog Soldier Renegades.' All three of the then territorial legislatures passed resolutions of thanks to General Carr and his command.

RELIEVED CROOKS FROM GREAT PERIL.

Another battle reproduced for the picture films in which Colonel Cody was an active participant was that of "War Bonnet Creek," under General Wesley Merritt and General Carr. They relieved General Crook and his command from great peril, and the motion photographs taken last fall are pronounced to be historically correct portrayals of that famous and perilous rescue.

Other films show the final Indian campaigns and the declaration of perpetual peace after the Ghost Dance war in 1890-91.

"My mission in Washington," says Colonel Cody, "was to deliver these pictures to the government. These particular films are to be filed away in the archives of the war and interior departments and will keep alive in a vivid way the early history recorded in the paving of the way for the settlement of the great West by the government."

COLONEL CODY LOOKS YOUNGER THAN EVER.

The famous scout will be the star attraction this coming season in the Sells-Floto circus and Buffalo Bill (himself).

The Washington Post, in the course of a lengthy article concerning Colonel Cody's presence in Washington, says that:

"Colonel Cody is in fine physical condition and looks younger than he did the last time he appeared in Washington with his show. He is still that picturesque character, full of snap and ginger, straight as an arrow, with a ruddy complexion and long, gray hair, military mustache and goatee."

This was in answer to an unfounded rumor that the noted frontiersman and showman was ill in a Washington hospital.

 

WARRIORS GATHER TO ENACT BATTLES FOR MOVIE FILMS

Noted Soldiers Speed Toward Rushville, Neb., to Join Buffalo Bill.

GEN. MILES ON HIS WAY

Greatest Pageants Ever Photographed to Be Staged in Perfect Detail.

Rushville, Neb., Oct. 4 — The gathering in of the lines has begun. From everywhere there are speeding toward Rushville the men who will make possible the motion pictures of the great historical battles in the lives of Buffalo Bill and the generals who participated in the winning of the West.

And Rushville forms the meeting place. From the East, from the West, from the North and South, they are coming, generals who are returning to the scenes of youthful conflicts, returning to fight again the battles they fought in the days when Indians swarmed the hills and when dangers and death were everywhere. And chief among them is Lieut. Gen. Nelson A. Miles.

A telegram was received from General Miles this afternoon saying that he was on the way, arriving in Rushville early in the week.

MILES TO COMMAND TAKING OF PICTURES.

And on General Miles depends much, for it will be he who will command the taking of the great historical pictures. It will be he who will form the center of direction in the vast enterprise; it will be he who will see that every detail of the pictures which form the Indian fighting history of this country — and of Buffalo Bill, too — shall be absolutely correct. For it was General Miles who was in command at most of the battles, and who received the surrender of the Indians.

Now, while they wait for the arrival of the general, the motion picture directors are going over the scenarios written by Gen. Charles King, familiarizing themselves with the details of every scene, so that they may be ready upon the arrival of General Miles to go into the active plans of picture taking.

While Rushville is miles from the actual point of picture taking, yet it forms the gathering place for the men who are speeding toward it. With General Miles are also Brig. Gen. Marion P. Maus and others of the eastern brigade.

FROM THE WEST COMES BUFFALO BILL.

From the West there comes Buffalo Bill, leaving the hunting wilds of Wyoming for the old scenes of Indian days. Colonel Cody will arrive here tomorrow night. About the same time, Brig. Gen. Frank D. Baldwin, who leaves Denver tonight, will arrive. And one by one, the other generals who will participate in the greatest historical pictures that "movie men," ever have experienced, will make their appearance in Rushville, enter into conference with General Miles, and prepare for their parts in living over again the old days of death and danger.

It is planned that the actual taking of the pictures will begin about October 9. Just how long the work will continue will, of course, depend entirely upon conditions. In the pans of those directing the great undertaking, there is the desire that every feature of the battles which made history in the early days of the West, shall be reproduced with exactitude, even to the weather.

REPRODUCE WEATHER AS TOLD IN HISTORY.

If a battle was fought in the snow, then the taking of the pictures of that battle shall be in a snowstorm. Once a company of negro soldiers marched 100 miles in twenty-four hours and saved a regiment of white men pitted against the overwhelming numbers of Indians. And in the pictures that march will be shown — shown as accurately as the wonderful brain of General Nelson A. Miles can make it.

Every minute, it seems, the telegrams are pouring into Rushville today, asking for information regarding the taking of the pictures, and for permission to witness the undertaking. And the spectators, although the battlefield is far from cities or even towns, will be many. Newspaper correspondents from all over the country are to be present.

GENERALS GATHER TO ENACT BATTLE OF WOUNDED KNEE

Greatest Moving Picture Pageant Ever Witnessed About To Be Staged.

VILLAGE TO BE BURNED

Indians Erect Scores of Tepees That Will Be Distroyed [sic] in Fight.

Pine Ridge, S. D., Oct. 9 — The principals in the greatest historical motion pictures ever taken have arrived to sit around the camp fire tonight near the battlefield of Wounded Knee. There will gather Lieut.-Gen. Nelson A. Miles, Maj.-Gen. Jesse M. Lee, Col. W. F. Cody ("Buffalo Bill"), Maj.-Gen. Charles A. King, Brig.-Gen. Marion P. Maus, Brig.-Gen. Frank D. Baldwin, Maj. John M. Burke, Col. H. J. Sickels and Mike Russell, pioneer of Deadwood, who have come together for the first time in more than twenty years.

Generals Lee, King and Maus arrived in Rushville, Neb., at 6:30 o'clock this morning from Rushville. They were brought to Pine Ridge in motor cars and sent to the camp at Wounded Knee, and while the generals were traveling from Rushville the soldiers of the Twelfth cavalry were making their last march from Pine Ridge, where they camped yesterday, to the Wounded Knee camp, where they will receive the instructions and the uniforms necessary to their taking part in the historically correct motion picture battles, which are to ollow [sic].

The soldiers will not be the only ones who will be busy. A great village of tepees is being built by the sqaws [sic] and painted by the braves, all to be destroyed, for the village must be burned in one of the battles. The wagon train is growing wagon by wagon, that it may be burned also in strict accordance with history.

Hundreds of costumes are being gone over and the whole camp is one great scene of seething activity from morning till night. For the first time since the signing of the peace treaty between Indians and whites soldiers and Indians gathered together yesterday on the Pine Ridge.

The gathering was primarily for the taking of the motion pictures of the life of Buffalo Bill, secondarily it was for the flag raising in honor of the monument to the American Indian in New York, erected through the efforts of Colonel Cody and John Wanamaker. There were elaborate ceremonies consisting of the flag raising and the swearing of allegiance to it by the Indians. The Indian was given a flag to be known as their own. A peace message from President Wilson, Secretary Lane and others were sounded from a photograph of Colonel Cody. General Baldwin, Major Burke and Major James McLaughlin were present.

SUCCESS OF PICTURE.

W. F. CODY (BUFFALO BILL) HISTORIC FILM CO.

Pine Ridge — Ghost Dance War.

(FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

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GEN. NELSON A. MILES, "Bear Coat."

COL. W. F. CODY, "Buffalo Bill."

At Pine Ridge — 1891 and 1913. (Photo by Essanay Film Co.)

CAMP PINE RIDGE, Oct. 20.

"Onward and Upward" is the motto of those who do and dare. Determination, courage, with the spirit of the Angel of Chance (if winner, a white winged cherub; if loser, a black winged vampire, a gambler) control largely the action of the propogandists [sic] of progression. These, aided by faith in merit of subject, value of results, excellence of execution backed by historic truth animating an endeavor to achieve success, hatches out the eagle of victory.

This is true of the old Napoleon of the arena, Buffalo Bill, whose Elba since Denver was not a road to Waterloo and St. Helena, but a vacation and a recreation with the Prince of Monaco on a delightful hunting trip.

Also a re-direction of Charley Gates' footsteps to the hunter's paradise in the Yellowstone, with the rugged scenic temples of the Rockies to commune with, and the last home of big game to teach the joys of the chase, as a by-product of time, while arranging his grand re-union of veteran warriors, red and white, at Pine Ridge, as factors in reproducing history, preserving characters, recording past scenes and episodes of thrilling interest through the medium of the moving picture films.

All in two months of never-say-die action, which was no child's play, but more like the request of the old darkey for celestial assistance at the Charleston earthquake, ending with "Come Yo'sef for this am no child's play," and indeed it has not been.

To secure a sympathetic and helping reply in quick time from Secretary Lane and the Interior Department; from the Commissioner of Indian Affairs; Secretary Garrison and Gen. Wood, of the War Department, and the Army Board; a response in person from his old commanders, Lieut. General Nelson A. Miles, Major Charles King, Maj. Gen. Jesse M. Lee, Brig. Gen. Frank Baldwin, Brig. Gen. Marion Maus; approval and endorsement from a host of other distinguished army officers, under whom he scouted and fought; co-operation from veteran red warriors of note, who still linger on the scene; from survivors and participants in the story; conjunction of one thousand five hundred Indians and five hundred U. S. soldiers, the kindly assistance of that efficient Indian agent, Major John R. Brennan, the backing of Managers Tammen and Bonfils, and the Essanay producing corps, is the finest tribute possible to the record, the standing and character of the last of the great scouts, Buffalo Bill Cody. And he and his aides, producer Wharton, photographers Kaufman and Lucier and staff, "Johnny" Baker, Cy. Compton, Trooper Finn, and Father Taite, are making good.

Taking this last, and to him, least personally important in personal action campaign, the man glorious in the grandly colosssal [sic] results so long fought for and prayed for as it brought about permanent PEACE.

From the days of the sixties, the Ghost Dance War in 1890 and 1891, thirty years have passed, and to now — 1913 — after twenty-three years, the present activities of the old arena, fifty-four years have been measured by Father Time.

With the Old Guard assembled here he is assisting to patch past facts, accurately staged, correctly costumed, depicting first, the ride of Buffalo Bill to Sitting Bull's camp on a mission for General Miles, Col. Cody having come from Strasburg-on-the-Rhine, 5,900 miles,, [sic] to persuade the old chief (his once foe and then friend) to give up the Messiah Craze, and with his braves "come in" This picture shows the interception of the scout by a counter command from Washington.

The death of Sitting Bull in a fight with the Indian police Bull Head style of warfare of the time, with the scenic backgrounds built and painted by nature, such as the Bad Lands, stronghold of the red raiders; the rolling prairies around the old land mark, Porcupine Butte, and the silvery-winding Wolf Creek, White Clay stream over and on and about where skirmishes, forays and Battle of Wounded Knee occurred, to the valley of the Battle of the Mission, where the last shot was fired in the Red Man's last stand; the long sought peace pow-wow between Major Gen Jesse M. Lee, Major John M. Burke, as commissioners to the final grand council of chiefs and warriors, creating an armistice preliminary to the final terms; completing conditions with Gen. Miles; the surrender; the grand review and departure of Gen. Miles with the self-sacrificing chiefs, "Kicking Bear," "Short Bull," and twenty-three braves and hostages on the 16th of January to Fort Sheridan, which marked the conquering of and ending of centuries of racial strife on our continent with the old scout, Cody, in at the finish. He can now look back to a series of events to be recorded from boy trapper days, the Pony Express in '59, the Civil War as one era, to June 9, 1869, when, in the very important battle in results to Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado, the fight at Summit Springs, under Gen. E. A. Carr; the death of Chief "Tall Bull," with War Bonnet Creek fight and death of Yellow Hand in the 1876 Custer campaign intervening, covering from '69 to now — a period of forty-four years.

Quite a period of action in one man's life for posterity to remember, but now he has the satisfaction of knowing, as does his present confreres, that they will not, like old Rip Van Winkle, "be so soon forgotten when we are gone."

The most important to report is that notwithstanding marches of from sixty to seventy miles, and hours of manouvers and counter manouvers [sic], the experts are delighted. Though the weather was frigid (especially on the horses), when the cameras worked, Old Sol shed his brightest rays as an aid and abettor in the good work and every expert here believes, at this stage of the game, that the W. F. Cody, Buffalo Bill, Historic Film Company has secured splendid pictures, and can deliver the goods and pray the developers may prove it. so may it be — Amen.

Generals Miles, Baldwin and Maus, with detachment of U. S. cavalry and five hundred Indians, left Oct. 20, with Wharton and Johnny Baker, to take scenes in the Bad Lands.

 

COL. CODY SAYS RED ROCKS OFFER RIGHT PLACE FOR INDIAN PAGEANT

Buffalo Bill Declares Morrison Has Proper Environment for the Red Men to Be in Natural Home and Exhibit Should Show Life of Tribes and Pioneers.

A plea that the Indian Pageant of 1915 be held at the Park of the Red Rocks in Morrison was made yesterday by Col. William F. Cody (Buffalo Bill), at a meeting of the Colorado Publicity league at the Savoy hotel. The occasion of the meeting was the visit of Hon. Cato Sells, Indian commissioner, en route to Muskogee, Okla. Judge Sells spoke of the pageant with interest.

"I am interested in your 1915 Indian pageant, and of course hope it will be a great success, but the extent to which the Indian bureau will be able to take part in it is at this time undetermined. The degree of interest I would take in this enterprise would largely depend upon the character of the exhibit.

"If it is to be educational and calculated to give the country a better understanding of the accomplishments of the Indians; if it is the chief purpose to indicate his progress industrially and in an educational way.

EMPHASIZE EFFORTS TO CIVILIZE INDIAN.

"If it emphasizes the efforts of the government towards his civilization and the making of him a citizen on an equality with the white man, then I anticipate that I would be justified in active participation, but action in this respect will have to be determined after more extended information than I now possess.

"I know of the magnificent way of doing things in Denver, and I have confidence to believe that in this, as in all their other undertakings, it will be on the highest possible plane, and then certain to be helpful in the best sense of the word."

Following Judge Sells' speech came that of Colonel Cody, in which the history of the Indian was traced and the plea for the placing of the pageant made. Colonel Cody said:

"I have been very deeply interested in what Commissioner Sells has had to say regarding the Indian. whom I consider one of the noblest race of people on the American continent. The Indian, before the coming of the white man, was peaceably inclined. For instance, when Columbus and the white men who landed first on American soil, the Indians met them with open arms, invited them to land, made them all kinds of presents, everything in their possession; received them with all tokens of friendship, invited them to live with them and make their homes in this great, new land. And this invitation the white man acepted [sic].

WHITE MEN HAVE PRESSED RED MAN BACK.

"Soon after many more white men came. The Indians gave them land to cultivate, killed game for them and brought it to them and helped them in every way that was possible to make them happy. But more and more white people came and they wanted more land, until so many came that the Indian was pressed back toward the Alleghany mountains and the white kept pressing them back, taking their homes from them, making them leave the graves of their forefathers. Finally they were told to pass on beyond the Alleghany mountains, that there was a great country beyond there and that they could have it all. The noble Indians were gradually pressed farther and farther into the wilderness.

"But soon such men as Daniel Boone and others discovered the great country which is now known as Kentucky and Ohio and it was not long before the white man began to flock into that territory and the Indian was pressed farther back. Finally they told him to go west of the Mississippi river and once more the story of the great country beyond which would belong to the Indians forever was told them. It wasn't long before the great states known as Iowa and Missouri and Minnesota were discovered.

"And the Indian, sooner or later, was compelled to give up that country. Then, sixty or seventy years ago, our most able statesmen at Washington said to move the Indians beyond the Missouri river, that there was a great country, filled with buffalo, coyotes, rattlesnakes and so forth, that was only good for the Indians, and let them have it all.

FORCED INDIANS TO FIGHT FOR SELF-PRESERVATION.

"But the Indian was not long permitted to remain in the new territory allotted him. The white men kept gradually pushing backward. The great states now known as Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Colorado and Wyoming were settled by the white men. The Indians, having been driven from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean and back again, wanderers upon the country that they at one time owned, naturally, at last made up their minds that the only way they could hold anything was to fight for it. This brought on the wars which continued for fifty years. But finally the Indian, outnumbered by the whites, was compelled to surrender.

"In my life, I have never known of a treaty made between the United States government and the Indian, that was not first broken, not by the government, but by the white man. Now I feel that it is a fitting thing to do, that in 1915, to bring the representative men from all the Western tribes to some location, some place where they can meet, not only bring the plains Indians, but every state in America that has civilized Indians should send their delegations out here to see how the plains Indians are living. And so, too, that the plains Indians may see and compare their situation with that of the more advanced Indians.

"The customs of the Indians and the story of the Indian should be told by themselves, from their earliest traditions up to the present day, showing the Indian of today with the progress he has made toward civilization and education. This the white man owes to the red man and I am glad to hear Commissioner Sells say that if this could be done on educational lines, his department would not seriously object to it.

DENVER SHOULD SHOW NATURAL ADVANTAGES.

"I think Denver, being in the very heart of the present Indian reservations, that it would be a fitting place to hold such a grand historical pageant. And if it is held near Denver, my opinion is that it should be held at the foot of the Rocky mountains. The Indian loves the mountains. Morning and evenings, he climbs to the loftiest peak around his encampment, and it is upon the mountains and hills that they hold their religious services. Their encampment should be placed on high, healthy ground with plenty of room for their horses and ponies. They like to see their horses around them. And there is no place on the face of the earth that nature has done so much for as it has for Mount Morrison and the Red Rocks. The Indians will simply be religly [sic] impressed by that natural, great ampitheater that God placed there for them.

"There should be the story told of the life of the early pioneer, the miner, the trapper, the freighters, pony expressmen and the stage coachers. There should be duplicates of their dugouts, their log cabins, frontier forts and churches and buildings showing the progress of the West from its old days to the present. These buildings should be erected and placed where they could be left as a permanent asset to the city of Denver and the state of Colorado.

TOURIST WANTS TO SEE GLORIES OF MOUNTAINS.

"Denver has, right at its very door, the greatest natural resource on all the earth. The Garden of the Gods, of course, is beautiful, but it is not to be compared with the Red Rocks near Denver. Great hotels should be erected there and kept open winter and summer, the year around. Denver would benefit by such a resort. It would always have the tourists near the great city. They would not come to spend a day or two in Denver and then go off to other resorts, leaving Denver to see no more of them, they would have a great summer resort here that would hold them, enthrall them, keep them here.

"Some people may say that it is too far away to hold this great pageant. But it is only a few miles more of riding; the cost is comparatively little more, and as Denver and Colorado advertise that this is the greatest scenic state in the Union, why not hold this grand pageant where Denver can make good by showing the grandest scenery in the world? Whereas, should a place like Overland park be taken it would show only a low, marshy piece of land, surrounded by a board fence. The Eastern man would naturally ask about the grand scenery that has been talked about. But to the other place the tourists are given just a little longer ride, just a little more expense and they can be landed right in the heart of the grandest mountain scenery in the world.

"The Indian deserves such a place for his pageant. The tourist deserves such a place of beauty and of wonderful scenery in which to view the pageant — and Denver deserves to place the pageant there that she may show herself to the best possible advantage."

WHITE WOMAN SLAIN BY INDIANS NEAR BASE OF WICHITAS

One woman was slain and another severely wounded by the Comanche Indians, west of the new post on the Ft. Sill military reservation Wednesday. With over a thousand soldiers not half a mile away, the cold blooded murder was accomplished, and the remaining woman was fortunate indeed in not sharing a like fate. Angered at the white men and fearing to attack them openly, the wily Indians had captured the women and were endeavoring to carry them to the Indian fastnesses in the Wichita mountains, and would not doubt, have succeeded, but for one incident.

Col. W. F. Cody (Buffalo Bill) known for almost half a century as the Indians Nemisis [sic], is stopping temporarily in Lawton. Friends of the captured women appealed to him to effect their rescue, if possible, and the gallant scout responded at once. Through Col. Granger Adams, commandant at Ft. Sill, he was given a company of cavalry and almost immediately struck the trail of the Indians one half mile this side of Four Mile Crossing.

The Indian camp was sighted at 2 o'clock Wednesday afternoon and after reconnoitering from the base of Mt. Signal, the Colonel ordered a charge, being but little outnumbered. The redskins heard the approaching cavalry but were forced to fight in the open with the result that they were soon scattered and took to flight. Colonel Cody rode straight for the chief's tent, where he expected to find the captured women, and it is sad to relate that one of the women was slain before the Colonel could slay the Indian captor. The remaining lady was severely wounded by the tomahawk.

Mrs. Olive Word Titterington, of Dallas, Texas, and prominent socially in that city, was the lady slain and Mrs. Theo W. Wharton, her friend whom she was visiting when captured, was the lady rescued. Many Indians were slain and a number of soldiers killed. Col. Cody escaped unscathed.

All in the pictures, of course.

PRINCE OF MONACO EXPECTS FIRST SHOT AT BEAR AND PROMISES FRIENDS STEAKS FOR SUPPER

Royal Huntsman Quits Civilization as He Hits Trail.

Young Gates Takes With Him All Comforts of Hotel Life.

Cody, Wyo, Sept. 29. — Col. W. F. Cody (Buffalo Bill), kept open house at his temporary tepee hotel at Pahaska in honor of his royal guest, the Prince of Monaco, yesterday, the reception being preliminary to the moving of the hunting camps into the wilds tomorrow. The callers included Charles G. Gates ("Spend-a-Million Gates").

Pahaska was the meeting point of two hunting parties, one given by Colonel Cody and A. A. Anderson, the wealthy Cody artist, on whose estate the Prince of Monaco is the guest of honor. The other party is headed by Gates and the party of friends he brought with him from New York last week after reading of the plans made for the big game hunt of Buffalo Bill.

Colonel Cody is director general of both parties, but will continue with Anderson and the Prince of Monaco on one trail, while Gates and his companions, under the guidance of Frost and Richards, two of the most noted guides in this section, enter the heart of the mountains in another direction.

 

Great Buck Deer Proves Once More Buffalo Bill's Prowess as Huntsman

Carcass Is Sent to City as Souvenir of Hunting Expedition.

Party Bags Other Game In the Mountains of Wyoming.

A great buck deer hangs on exhibition in the butcher shop of Otto Shatz, 1201 Welton street, as evidence that the eye of Col. W. F. Cody (Buffalo Bill) still is keen and sure, that his hand trembles not when his muscles send the rifle to his shoulder. For the great deer is one of the results of a hunting trip taken by Buffalo Bill and his party thirty miles above his ranch near Cody, Wyo. The deer was sent by Col. Cody to H. H. Tammen and F. G. Bonfils as a Thanksgiving gift.

Following his return from South Dakota where he took part in the reproduction of the history of the War of the Messiah, the Battle of Summit Springs and the Battle of the Warbonnet, Col. Cody decided that he needed a "rest." But rest to this man of the plains means a different thing from what rest means to the ordinary man. No sitting in an arm chair and watching the sunset for Buffalo Bill. Not yet.

GUIDES WARN HIM OF MOUNTAIN DANGERS.

He hied him to Cody, where he superintended the harvesting of a great crop of oats, and then, in spite of the fact that the snow lay so heavy in the hills that ordinary hunters were afraid to leave town, Buffalo Bill and his old comrade, John Reckless Davis, began preparations for a deer hunt. There gathered around the two plainsmen the guides and others who were resting in town, and warned them of the snows out yonder. But Buffalo Bill and his hunting partner laughed.

"Snow?" Asked Buffalo Bill. "What of it? Why, I'm going to take my daughter with me."

And so he did. With twenty-one horses to carry supplies, a cook outfit, and a horse wrangler, Col. Cody, his son-in-law, F. H. Garlow, Mrs. Garlow and Reckless Davis started for the hills. That was two weeks ago — and one of the results of the hunt now hangs in Shatz's market.

OTHER ANIMALS KILLED BY PARTY.

But that is only a small part of the game. The party, with Buffalo Bill guiding it to the haunts of game, killed three elk, and five deer. Most of the animals fell as the result of bullets from the sure-shooting rifle of Buffalo Bill. There was one, however, a buck deer, which owed its death to Mrs. Garlow.

Running at full speed, it shot through the forest, three hundred yards in front of the woman. Quickly she raised her rifle. There was a puff of smoke, a report — the deer had fallen dead at the first crack.

And the hunt, although already wonderfully successful, has not ended yet. Buffalo Bill says that he intends to [...?] out until he feels good and rested [...?] that he'll bring down more deer [...?] elk before he comes home.

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The big red buck deer shot by Col. William F. Cody, thirty miles from his ranch near Cody, Wyo., and sent to Denver friends as a Thanksgiving present. The size of the animal is shown in comparison with Otto Shatz, who is standing beside it, and at whose market, 1201 Welton street, the deer is being exhibited.

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"BUFFA [...?]

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Lithe as a boy at 68, undaunted by business revenues that would have killed the hope and ambition of the ordinary man past the meridian of life, "Buffalo Bill" (William F. Cody) still typifies the ruggedness of the old west that he made to live again in his wild west show long after it had passed into history.

"I suppose you have come to write my obituary as most of the newspaper men have been doing of late — well, it 'taint necessary," said the old Indian fighter, as a reporter buttonholed him in the lobby of the Pont-chartrain this morning. One glance at the ruddy, clear complexion and tall, erect form of Col. Cody was sufficient to convince anyone that obituaries would not be in order for many years.

Col. Cody admits that his wild west show went to smash in Denver, July 12 last, but it takes something more than that to [...?] the courage of the veteran raised in the stern school of frontier warfare.

Planning for Show.

It was erroneously reported in the Detroit papers this morning that I am traveling with the Sells-Floto circus. What I am really here for is a conference with my new partners, Messrs. Bonfils and Tammen, the owners of the Denver Post, with whom I am planning to put out a new wild west show.

"I am going to devote the balance of my life to prepetuating [sic] the true history of our Indian wars through the medium of the camera," continued Col. Cody. "Tomorrow I start for the west to supervise the taking of pictures of the last Indian battles fought on this continent on the actual scenes of combat. I am also planning to preserve the sign language of the Indians, fast lying [sic] out among the younger generation of the redmen, with the aid of the camera.

"When I reach the Indian country this week, I shall go first to the site of the battle Summit Springs, fought June 9, 1869, by a detachment of United States troops with whom I was acting as chief of scouts and a party of Cheyenne and Siou [sic] warriors. These Indians had taken a number of white men and women prisoners, and our task was to beat them back before they had killed their white captives. It was in this battle that the Sioux chief, Tall Bull, was killed.

To Visit Battle Scene.

"I shall next visit the scene of Gen. Custer's last stand at the battle of the Little Big Horn, June 29, 1876. I wa [sic] not present during the battle, but, I came in with General Cook and Terry a few hours after it was over and helped to bury the dead.

"On July 11 following, the battle of War Bonnet was fought by a detachment of 500 men from Gen. Crook's army, under the command of Gen. Wesley Merritt. It then [sic] that I killed Chief Yellow Hand in a duel just before the battle began. Gen. Charles King, the novelist, was adjutant to Gen. Merritt at this battle and has written a description of it.

To Perpetuate Incidents.

"The next place I shall visit will be the scene of the last of all Indian battles, that of Wounded Knee fought in 1890, against the Sioux, in which I participated as a brigadier-general of the Nebraska national guard.

"The last surrender of hostile Indians in this country took place Jan. 21, 1891, at the Pine Ridge agency. The last grand council was held at the Pine Ridge agency soon after. We will also perpetuate these historical incidents with the aid of the camera."

Col. Cody says the first time he ever visited Detroit was back in '72, with his Scouts of the Plains, presenting drama called "Life on the Border." Col. Cody says it was on that trip to Detroit the he saw for the first time a calcium light in a theater.

"I have visited eDtroit [sic] nearly every year since and have watched its growth with interest," said the colonel. "There is no more [thrilling?] city in the country."

 

MOVING PICTURES RECORD DRAMA OF SIOUX WAR FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS

FAMOUS Indian fighters, many of whom took part in the actual conflict, re-enacting the scenes of danger through which they went in the old frontier days. The conflict was "fought over again" on the same territory that saw the original conflict. Several tribes of Indians and 4,000 soldiers took part.

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"Buffalo Bill's" famous duel with "Yellow Hand."

COPYRIGHT Made by the COL W F CODY HISTORICAL PICTURES CO.

Fifteen United States army officers, ranging in rank from captain to general, sat quietly in a darkened room in the First National Bank Building yesterday and saw themselves fighting Indians. With entire comfort they say [sic] themselves enduring the hardships of forced marches, of hunger, of thirst, of danger and combat. They saw themselves in motion pictures.

It was the first presentation of the motion pictures of the Sioux war. The war was "fought over again" last Autumn in the same territory where the war originally was fought. In many instances, the fighting was done for the "movies" by the same men who did it in earnest a quarter of a century ago.

Six miles of films were used by the Essanay Company in reproducing the scenes. All of these films will be stored in the government archives at Washington to make history more graphic for the rising generation than ever it was for the school children in the past. Copies of the pictures will be shown to the public in the near future — but the films will be "edited" so that a few miles may be eliminated and so that the whole performance may require only about two hours.

Among those who watched their own actions in the "movies" yesterday were General Nelson A. Miles, Colonel W. F. Cody, General Wheston, General Stewart, General King, General Baldwin, Colonel Schenk, Colonel Baker, Colonel Kingsbury, Colonel McCarthy, Colonel Kimball, Colonel McDonald, Major Bay and Captain Billingsleg.

Four thousand soldiers took part in the scenes photographed and there were several bands of Indians, including those who fought in the original war.

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The death of "Sitting Bull" and above, to right. General Miles.

 

'Buffalo Bill,' Famed Scout and Indian Fighter, Promises to Aid Denver in World's Pageant

Col. Cody Will Speak Before the Publicity League Tonight.

Will Explain Plans to Last Grand Indian Council.

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Buffalo Bill today made suggestions to the Colorado Publicity league for the 1915 Indian Pageant. He suggests that the Indian sign language should be interpreted by the Indians to the visitors. In the above pictures he is shown illustrating the Indian sign language. The interpretations follow: 1 — "A large company is coming." 2 — An Indian. 3 — A tepee or house. 4 — A white man. 5 — A big tepee. 6 — Friendship.

"Buffalo Bill," scout and frontiersman, the best friend the Indians have had in many years and the most versatile student of their manners and customs, will address the Colorado Publicity league at a meeting to be held at the Brown Palace hotel this evening, when the organization will be completed by the election of directors and the formal adoption of the constitution and by-laws.

Taking advantage of the presence in Denver of Colonel Cody at the moment that the charter [...?] of the league was completed by the signature of the [...?] member, Gordon Jones, temporary chairman, invited the old scout to meet with the league and tell what, in his opinion, would be the best and most attractive Indian congress to be offered to tourists during the summer of 1915.

Colonel Cody and [...?] a long conversation, durin gwhich [sic] the former explained plans that have been in contemplation for several years and offered to do all in his power to aid the league to carry out whatever form of exhibition it decides upon. On behalf of the league, Mr. Jones expressed his thanks for the services which Colonel Cody had proffered and assured him that whatever he suggests will receive the most careful consideration of the men who will have the arrangements for the exhibition in charge.

Colonel Cody will be obliged to withdraw from this evening's gathering in time to take a train for his home in North Platte, Neb., so that as soon as the constitution has been adopted he will be called upon. In the meanwhile the committee to which he will be assigned the duty of presenting a list of candidates for directors will be in session. This will take some little time, and Colonel Cody will have ample opportunity to explain the plans he has cherished for so long a period of years.

Letters advising the subscribers to the league of this evening's meeting were sent out yesterday. The notice [...?] for the reason that the committee on membership desired to be assured that they would have 300 names on the charter roll before Chairman Jones issued the call under the resolution adopted at the initial meeting on December 5 directing the holding of a meeting only after the requisite number of subscribers had been obtained.

Colonel Cody, with some thirty members of the league's most energetic leaders were guests at a luncheon given at the Albany at noon today by Sam F. Dutton, during which the plans for the exhibition which Colonel Cody has evolved were explained briefly. Those who heard them were enthusiastic in the extreme and all indicated their hope that the league as a body would decide to accept them.

 

WAR SECRETARY AT FORT LOGAN

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Upper left: General Leonard Wood, Upper right: Lindley Garrison, secretary of war. Center picture: General Frank D. Baldwin, Colonel J. W. Pope, Colonel W. F. Cody, C. B. Rhoads, General George W. Randall, Dennis Sullivan, Colonel L. E. Campbell Lower picture shows Secretary Garrison and Adjutant General John Chase of Colorado walking across the parade ground at Fort Logan.

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Buffalo Bill and his famous horse "Alexis."

 

General Miles' Diplomacy and Military Skill Ended Three Centuries of War Between Red Men and White

[photo]

General Miles and Staff in Headquarters at Pine Ridge. Left to Right — Major Baldwin, Major Ewing, Surgeon Bache, Captain M. P. Maus, General Miles, Colonel Kent, Colonel H. C. Corbin, and Colonel C. F. Humphrey. Insert Shows General Miles as He Is Today. This Photograph Was Made by a Member of General Miles' Staff in the Headquarters Mess Tent at Pine Ridge, in 1890, During the Height of the Campaign. Colonel Corbin Later Became Adjutant-General, and After Serving in the War with Spain He Died. Captain Maus Is Now Brigadier General. Colonel Humphrey Is Now Retired as Major General, Having Served as Quartermaster-General.

Great Leader's Tact and Experience Needed to Cope With Indians' Belief That Palefaces Never Were Known to Keep a Treaty.

Pine Ridge, S. D., Oct. 15. — The remark of old General Dumas in the drama of "The Lady of Lyons" about Claude Melnotte that "a man never knows how highly he can respect another until after he has fought with him" is borne out by the old-time Westerners here, when one hears their expressed appreciation of some of the brighter qualities shown by the redmen whom they fought so desperately.

It is astonishing considering the peculiar character of the context, it being the most implacably savage war of any era in world history — a fight to the death, of torture. No prisoners were taken by the redmen and only under exceptional circumstances by their white opponents. Not only admiration, but even sympathy for the redman's patience is daily expressed by those who were forced by duty to meet the situation with a severity of reprisal to the limit.

One learns from the campfire chats of these experienced men that "Who struck Billy Patterson?" was not the greatest of standard conundrums of the olden days, but it was "When did the white men or the government ever keep a treaty with the Indians?" No matter how often or how loudly propounded by generations of questioners since the Mayflower days, no listener for an answer has heard the faintest response or echo from the walls of time. It will be a problem that some future perfected atmospheric wireless wave may record, to render its discoverer famed in historic Indian research.

MEMORY FAILS TO RECORD SQUARE DEAL.

In this camp, filled with aged redmen wise in Indian lore, noted generals and scouts with records in frontier history, agents and friends, all memories fail ( [...?] to a few late years) to bring forth the data and location of "a square deal."

Maj. Gen. Jesse M. Lee, first permanent military agent of Brule Sioux (after the war of 1876, and never forgotten by them for his fair treatment) remarked, "There may have been some such, and I have heard it so asserted, but I never had a definite answer to the query, although it is possible a biased jury might pass a verdict of fulfillment, and then it would only be justified by the rule of law giving the 'defendant the benefit of the doubt.'"

As per example, years ago when a certain commission was debating a treaty the tribal spokesman alluded to another treaty of exchange of territory, when they were told the perpetuity of the government's fulfillment of promises was assured, as "this treaty is made to last as long as grass grows, the sun shines and rivers run."

OBLIGATION ENDED AS STREAMS DRIED UP.

As many clauses were violated, the Indians thought the white men knew the future, as their new territory encountered several seasons of drought, a total eclipse of the sun and they suffered through the deal as "in the drought our rivers ran dry, sinking out of sight in the sand, and as no rain came, so no grass grew," so the white man's obligation was ended.

So when the leading commissioner repeatedly declared that this was a cinch for them, as he had the ear of the great Father, an old chieftain arose and said "You have the ear of the great Father, you say?" "Yes," came the reply. "Then open your bag and let us see it." On the commissioner's delay to comply, pointing his finger, the chief scornfully said, "If you cannot show us you are a forked tongued liar."

General Crook is on record as stating, when officially testifying once, that he knew of "thirty-three treaties between the government and the Indians, thirty of which were grossly violated and the other three are still unsettled and under discussion."

GHOST DANCE WAR FORCED BY STARVATION.

Though the Messiah craze was a religious one, creating a continental conspiracy, the actual ghost dance war was precipitated by a forced state of almost starvation among the Northern Sioux.

Their rations were overdue; their dependence on them rendered them helpless. Their game was all gone, their crops a failure and the rations and [...?] annuities, due in the early fall of 1890 arrived not, in fact, were delivered after the war in the winter of 1891. The money due from the sale of lands long occupied by settlers near White River had been overdue several years on account of congress' failure to appropriate.

The Indians at Pine Ridge had a new political appointee, an agent whose lack of tact irritated them, and there was a row; the agent was panicky and called for troops while the philanthropists urged the suppression of the ghost dances. Rendered desperate, a great portion of the Ogallallas rounded up all cattle in sight, including the government herd and, joined by recalcitrants from the Rosebud agency, retreated to a stronghold in the Bad Lands. They claimed that they preferred to die on the warpath with stomachs full than endure the tortures of a lingering death by starvation. Thus the general conspiracy intended for the following spring, when the sun shone and the grass was plenty, was prematurely launched in the fall of 1890.

The Argus eye of one of the best posted and astute of the army's Indian fighters, General Nelson A. Miles, was fortunately overseeing conditions; his ear was on the ground as commander of the division, and the season suited him admirably, and with rare strategic skill he started to nip the plants of discontent ere they fully ripened.

Colonel Cody, "Buffalo Bill," a great friend of "Sitting Bull," came all the way from Strasburg, Alsace-Lorraine, in Germany, to visit the old chief, under commission of General Miles, to convince him of the futility of rebellion, even if he had to prove to one of his best warriors the vulnerability of the ghost shirt. The well-intended, but misguided philanthropic influence at Washington caused the recall of Scout Cody when near the old chief's camp. This disarranged the pacific measure, intended by General Miles, and resulted in the tragic end of the great statesmen and medicine man of the Uncapappas, caused the "Big Foot" band to scatter, trecking [sic] south to join the defying warriors "out" in the Bad Lands.

To further explain the reason for the intensity of the redmen's feelings, it may be well to refer to the violated government promises of rations and annuities.

INDIANS PROMISED $10 FOR EACH PERSON.

Beside the land to be theirs when transferred beyond the Missouri, the treaty of 1868 at Laramie by General Harney guaranteed every buck, squaw and papoose $10 a head and if of the producing industrial class, $30 a head each year for thirty years. In addition, for the forced occupation of the Black Hills (which had been overflowed with gold seekers, to an extent the government felt itself powerless to rectify by any means the public would sanction) the treaty of 1877 promised the following rations to each, every day: one and one-half pounds of beef, one-half pound of flour, one-half pound of corn, [...?] pounds of sugar, four pounds of coffee, three pounds of beans, clothing and blankets. These promises were not always fulfilled and, on this occasion, not at all, this creating an incentive to fan the flames of discontent like wind upon a prairie fire.

Had the busy American public paid attention to the important events of almost contemporary history, it would have seen that the foresight, judgment and sagacity of General Nelson A. Miles saved in lives and money and prevention of check to Western settlement a loss so incalculable as to deserve the nation's gratitude.

MILES PRACTICALLY ROSE FROM THE RANKS.

He was a soldier in the Civil war, practically rising from the ranks to a major generalship (commanding the Department of Virginia at the finish) with a record under fire possibly equaled, but most certainly not surpassed, in army annals.

The Messiah move was silently working as a grand conspiracy exceeding in scope that of the great Tecumseh and the Six Nations from the fact that sixteen nations and their component tribes, including former foes as well as friendly clans, were secretly bound in alliance by a death vow to stand shoulder to shoulder with a certainty of recruits, from the Blackfeet on the North to the Taquis on the South, and from tribes on every land that racial sympathies could band together. These were the complicated conditions that General Miles saw, but others who should have done so, could not comprehend.

The belligerent chieftains grasped at this failure of supplies to push their people to conflict. General Miles (Bear Coat) quickly decided these men like Sitting Bull, Two Strikes, Kicking Bear, Short Bull (the Apostle Peter of the Messiah) were to be checkmated in snow time and by peaceful means if possible.

On Miles' arrival in a blinding snow storm, he grasped the situation of the foodless Indians, and using the unwritten law of 'military necessity' as authority, he gave immediate orders to issue a soldier's rations to all the friendly, all the neutral ones, and to any of the bad men in the Bad Lands that would "come in and be good."

Quick action for a trial of strength on military lines was used to perfection, and a great point gained by throwing General E. A. Carr's command across the entrance to the inaccessible stronghold in Bad Lands, and preventing Kicking Bear, who came down to join the combined force of more than 4,000 Indians getting back after the last stand of the redmen, the battle of the Mission.

EFFECTIVE FACTORS IN ESTABLISHING CORDON.

In this the Nebraska militia, with Brig. Gen. W. F. Cody ("Buffalo Bill") acting with Brigadier General Colby of the National guard, were effective factors in carrying out the successful plan of encircling in a [190?] -mile military cordon around the Indians in the field, awaiting the deep snows, the lack of commissary, the guns "that shoot today and kill tomorrow" (Hotchkisses), the effect of persuasion and peace overtures to bring about a surrender.

A few weeks of communion under frigid conditions brought about a request for consultation with white men.

A grand powwow was held in the hills, resulting in a restoration of confidence that completed full terms of surrender. Gen. Nelson A. Miles' combination of military skill and diplomacy thus ended forever three centuries of racial wars between the red men and the white.

 

General Miles Accepts Hostages of Indian Chiefs Before Movie Lens as He Did 23 Years Ago

Four Famous Soldiers See Enactment of Pathetic Picture.

Red Men Promise That Peace Shall Reign for All Time.

(By RYLEY COOPER.)

Rushville, Neb., Oct. 29. — Upon the parade ground of the Indian agency here yesterday, there came in re-enactment a scene of twenty-three years ago, for yesterday Lieut. Gen. Nelson A. Miles and his staff received the promise of the Indian chiefs that forever there would be peace and just as it was done in the days of 1891.

The Indian chiefs gave themselves up as hostages to be held by General Miles as a guarantee of their good faith.

It was a rolling away of the years, that scene yesterday morning, when General H. M. Lee and General Marion Maus, General Miles received the Indians and heard their promise of peace, then General Baldwin, joining the group, the four famous generals watched the Indians come forward one by one and climb into the wagons to be carried away to civilization, and in that action there was one survivor of four famous scouts who were present at the scene in 1891, P. Wells.

In the old days Mr. Wells had [photo] Generals Miles, Baldwin and Maus on the "Movie Battlefield" at Pine Ridge. the company of Frank Girard, B. Gardener, known as Little Bat, and Louis Shangreen, but they have passed to the beyond now and only Wells is left.

It was a wonderful picture, of many beautiful features, that was taken yesterday morning. Ranged on one side, at the delivering of hostages, sat in review Generals Miles, Maus, Lee and Baldwin, while on each side of the square were [sic] waited the army wagons were the troops awaiting the order to move. A signal, and there walked forward Wells, with the hostages, and among those who came forward Short Bull, who once before enacted the scene and enacted it in earnest. In their great bonnets and masses of bead work were the Indians clothed today as when they had first appeared for the finishing of the treaty.

Beautiful eagle feathers swayed in the wind, tobacco bags, wonderful in their workings, dangles from the wrists of the red men as they came forward.

The red men of the Indian reservations were present yesterday to go before the camera, and it was all exactly as history made it in January, 1891. Watching carefully every feature, General Miles designated each action of the Indians and the soldiers so that it might conform with the original action in the years gone. The great general saw that the picture was historically correct in every detail and that not a feature was forgotten.

[photo]

Lieutenant General Miles and Scout Buffalo Bill at the Pine Ridge Indian agency.

 

Buffalo Bill to Live Over His Daring Feats and Indian Battles for Movies

Idol of West Will Enact Scenes for Essanay Company.

Films to Be Greatest Ever Shown, Is Promise of G. K. Spoor.

The last stand of the Cheyennes, the battles of Wounded Knee, the Little Big Horn, the Mission and all other big engagements of the pioneer days of the West, in which William F. Cody (Buffalo Bill) took part, are to be featured in all parts of the world in moving picture films. The battles are to be fought over again for the Essanay Film Manufacturing company of Chicago.

Not only will Buffalo Bill be the stellar attraction in the great battles between the soldiers and Indians, but his whole life and service to the West will be shown from his boyhood days. He is to be pictured as the buffalo hunter, the Indian scout, the pacifier of the reds, the greatest factor in the settlement of the plains, the real pathfinder and trail blazer, one to whom the West owes a debt of everlasting gratitude.

The contract was closed Wednesday night for the production of the Buffalo Bill films by one of the greatest moving picture organizations in the world. Buffalo Bill, Indians, cowboys and all the other characters are to fight all over again the terrific battles of plain and canon on the exact spots where the original engagements took place. They are expected to be the most realistic pictures ever produced, with none of the true-to-life details lacking.

EXPENSE NOT CONSIDERED, DISTANCE OBLITERATED

Expense is not to be considered and time and distance are to be obliterated. The great film company's motive is to produce, for the benefit of the world, the thrilling adventures of Buffalo Bill, the idol of the youth and the grown-ups of many nations.

The films are designed not only to be of surpassing interest from the standpoint of the thriller, but of inestimable value as an educator both to young and old. The Essanay company leads all others in its efforts to keep in advance in educational lines and is the pioneer in that line.

Can the imaginative mind bring to view a more pleasing bit of entertainment than to sit for an hour or two and watch the nation's beloved hero of the plains, Buffalo Bill, fight again the awful battles with the savage red men; watch him leading the blue coated soldiers to victory over the Indians at the battle of the Little Big Horn, or his bravery and daring at Pine Ridge and a hundred other bloody battle grounds? It will be Buffalo Bill in real life, and many of the self-same Indians who aimed the deadly arrows at his waving locks.

START TO WAR GROUNDS TO BE MADE OCTOBER 1

The movie outfit and Buffalo Bill will start on October 1 for the old battle and hunting grounds. The arrangements are to be completed by George K. Spoor, president; Charles F. Stark, commercial manager and general manager, and V. R. Day of the Essanay Film company. They have been here a week. They pledge the reputation of their firm that the movies of Buffalo Bill and the battles will be nearer historically correct than any other attempt of theirs.

On this same jaunt they are to show the progress of the Indian from his most savage state when a blanket and a rifle or bows and arrows were his only companions, to his present civilized and progressive state, including his schools and colleges, his farms and modern homes and his handiwork in a thousand ways.

The Essanay company, which was the very first to depict the Western cowboy as he really lived and had his being, is looking into the question of mines of Colorado with a view of showing mining scenes in its great educational campaign. The mines of the olden days are to be shown in comparison with those of modern times. The scenes are all to be laid in this state.

ESSANAY FILM PIONEER IN EDUCATIONAL LINE.

Just as George K. Spoor, president of this great concern, with its offices in Paris, Berlin, London and other cities of the old world, is one of the original moving picture men of America, so is his company the pioneer along educational lines by means of films.

Spoor did not tell what he would do by [illustration] GEORGE K. SPOOR, President of the Essanay Film Company, Who Is Completing Arrangements for Taking the Greatest Series of Moving Pictures Ever Exhibited in the Country. "Buffalo Bill" Will Be Shown in the Famous Battles When He Helped Win the West for the White Man. way of introducing the movie into the schools and colleges of the land, but went ahead and made the arrangements to have it done. The film is to be the first aid in the mechanical engineering courses in college. The United States Steel corporation is using it to show its salesmen how to sell its goods, show how its product is being made and how to carry on work with safety to employe and employer alike.

The Essanay people are the first to introduce the "safety first" movement via the film route. They are showing railroad men how to get on and off cars, just as the steel corporation shows its men how to operate safely in its mills.

PRESIDENT SPOOR BORN MOVING PICTURE MAN.

President Spoor comes from a railroad family, but is a born movie man. His plants are in Chicago, Niles, Cal., and Ithaca, N. Y. Efficiency and truthfulness are the keynotes. Every approved method is used and some that are not known to say other moving pictures makers are daily in use in the big plants.

President Spoor made some of the first pictures in America fiften yars [sic] ago. He was the first manufacturer to invade Europe. His mind is a daily moving picture film, for he is constantly devising some new method better to please the public, and is always inspired by the highest ideals. He taboos the vulgar and the cheap grade of pictures, and leans to the educational, the patriotic and true to life.

President Spoor is taking more personal interest in the proposed Buffalo Bill viws [sic] than in any other series ever undertaken by his company. He is a lifelong admirer of the great scout and Indian fighter, hunter and trapper, and says that it is his firm belief that Buffalo Bill had more to do with the remarkable progress and development of the West than any other person.

  [photo]

Colonel Cody The "Old Scout" Here for the Park County Fair, September 16, 17, 18,

The arrival of Colonel Cody yesterday sets the memory to working. World-wide is the fame of the man who has done so much for this particular portion of Wyoming.

Colonel Cody, "Buffalo Bill", came yesterday. Back to the old stamping ground, back to the country than whom no man as done as much to make famous as he; back to the bright land of his early love, where in the olden days when the Indians resented forceably the intrusion of the white men. And with him comes Johnny Baker, John Tate, Carlos Miles, and some of the rest of the men who have helped him make the wild west famous in the far east.

Full of enthusiasm is Colonel Cody. Five minutes talking with him is equal to a day in Wyoming's unequalled mountain air. One feels like getting up on his toes and doing something. The Park County Fair will lack nothing to make it a success if it is up to the Colonel and his party. He has come a long way to help his home town in the hour of need, and such entertainment as he and his party will furnish during those days next week will be worth going any number of miles to see. There will be roping of the kind seldom witnessed. There will be bucking of the sort to make one's hair stand on end.

Surely excitement will run high, for Colonel Cody is home.

Colonel Cody personally offers a prize of $25 in cash for the best dressed man, and $25 more for the best dressed woman to take part in the parade Tuesday morning. Just the real western, the real Wyoming style is what is wanted. Simplicity and thoroughness of equipment will probably be the points considered in awarding these prizes.

Preparations are being made to make this the biggest parade ever witnessed in this part of the country, and every cowboy and cowgirl in the county, or outside of the county, is wanted on that day. Whomsoever has a saddle and a pony is urged to be in Cody next Tuesday morning and take part in that parade.

ESSANY MOVING PICTURE CO. REPRESENTATIVE ARRIVES

Will Take Pictures of Fair Celebration, From Here to the TE Ranch and then to Pine Ridge Agency

Mr. Charles E. Kaufman, representing the Essanay moving picture outfit came in yesterday on the same train with Colonel Cody. He will be folowed [sic] shortly by Mr. T. Wharton, the general manager and scenario artist of the company.

These gentlemen are making preparations, first, to take some pictures of the stunts to be pulled off at the fair grounds next Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. This is the outfit with which Colonel Cody is connected, and with whose assistance will be reproduced all the famous battles and Indian fights of the young west. General Chas. King, the famous author, is now writing the stories of these battles, and when the stories are written, Mr. Wharton will prepare the scenario. It then remains for Colonel Cody and other prominent old-timers to actually re-stage those world-famed scenes. General Nelson A. Miles will be one of the actors. The General was there in person, too, and knows how to do it.

Most of this work will be done at Pine Ridge Agency, and the government has offered the use of the Indians stationed there for that purpose.

Before proceeding to the Pine Ridge agency, however, the Essanay company will take a good many pictures in and around Cody. If you want to see yourself in a moving picture, be at the Park County Fair, for it's liable to happen.

 

INDIAN HISTORY DEPICTED TO LIFE BY MOVIES FILM, SAYS GEN. KING

Famous Fighter Tells How Miles and Other Officers Supervised Each Detail That Battles Might Be Faithfully Reproduced.

(By. MAJ. GEN. CHARLES KING.)

When the Chicago Tribune informed its readers on Tuesday (Oct. 10) that Lieutenant General Miles, the four officers with him, and our famous old scout, "Buffalo Bill," re-enacted the very parts they had played at the battle of Wounded Knee, Dec. 29, 1890, the Tribune unwittingly conveyed a wrong impression, yet told the petrified truth.

No one of the generals named nor Cody himself took any part whatever at that mid-winter and most unfortunate battle. No one of them took any part in the photographic representation of its reproduction.

Nevertheless, certain other papers report General Miles and his associates, including myself, as "charging with Cody and driving the Indians in full flight while the cameras clicked," and many theatrical and some malicious flings are being made at their expense. The papers [flirted?] with the assumption that these officers were going for the express purpose of being photographed in mimic battles, and having committed themselves to that view of the case, consistency seems to have demanded that they adhere to it.

GEN. MILES WENT FOR ANOTHER PURPOSE.

But the facts are that General Miles and his party went for a very different purpose.

The worst Indian war ever known was narrowly averted in the winter of 1890-91. Semi-starvation, superstition and [fatigue?] had conspired to arouse the [en-?] Sioux nation to revolt. The Messiah craze had made fanatics of the warriors of every band. Nothing but the [adept?] measures taken by General Miles, commander of the military division of Missouri, could have put a stop to it. He assembled troops from all over the West, gradually and skillfully "herded" the entire array of "hostiles" in toward Pine Ridge, and there, with nearly a dozen regiments surrounding them, the half-crazed Indians were induced to listen to reason, and after many councils and conferences that called for infinite tact, patience and forbearance on the part of Miles and his aides, the chiefs gathered in solemn state, and in most dramatic and impressive conclave, with hands uplifted to heaven, pledged allegiance to the White Father and signed the peace compact that to this day stands unbroken.

GREAT PEACE CONGRESS RE-ENACTED BY GENERALS.

No scene of greater historical interest was ever enacted on our Indian frontier, and it was to reproduce the pictures of the great peace congress, not a battle, that General Miles and the survivors of his staff, Generals Lee, Maus, and Baldwin, journed to Pine Ridge.

The intention is to have these films historically as accurate as possible. As the dramatic affair at Pine Ridge occurred less than a quarter of a century ago, General Miles still looks, afoot and in saddle, much as he did at the time, and it was interesting to watch the Sioux survivors of the campaign who came to pay homage to "Bear Coat," "the big chief who showed them the right road." It was good to note the reverence in which they held General Lee, whom they had learned to trust implicitly years before the outbreak of 1890, who came then from distant Arizona, as captain in the Ninth infantry, to the aid of General Miles in the pacification work of '90 and '91, and who in the dead of winter, and without military escort of any kind, led like a second Moses, his saddened and suffering red children to the new land of promise along the Missouri, and saw to it that they got the provisions and clothing intended for them. Generals Baldwin and Maus were officers of the personal staff of the major-general commanding in the field that winter of '90 and '91, and rightfully appear with him in the pictures of the council and the surrender.

SICKEL SKETCHED SCENE OF BATTLE.

The pictures taken at Wounded Knee were to represent on the very ground the fight of December 29, 1890. Colonel Sickel, with a few troops of the Twelfth cavalry, and the skilled field artists of the great film company (of which Colonel Cody, "Buffalo Bill," is vice president), together with a host of Indians, were there for that purpose. Sickel commanded a troop of the Seventh cavalry at the battle, made an excellent sketch of the field at the time, and was of the utmost assistance to the "stage managers." As for myself, reported as charging, etc., with Cody, in the mimic scene, I was just as far from this year's "battle" as I was from that of 1890 — to-wit, about [100?] miles.

It is true that we were all together at Pine Ridge agency early in October, and that I even went further and visited the scene of Wounded Knee, and saw Jack Red Cloud and talked with Joe Horn Cloud. It is true that some spirited, stirring battle scenes were taken, notably the fight on the War Bonnet, of July 17, 1876, and that of Summit Springs, July 11, 1869, in both of which my own regiment was engaged, and in both of which Cody was our chief scout and the same conspicuous figure on the field, and in each of which he killed in close combat the leader of the Indian band. It is true that I have been helping in the scenario and staging of these pictures, for at War Bonnet, at least, Cody and I were close together, and I saw the start of his duel with Yellow Hand, but not the finish, as I was rather busy myself at the time.

But when the papers describe me as "re-enacting on the field" the somewhat active part demanded of me some forty years ago, they are far too flattering.

COL. CODY SAYS RED ROCKS OFFER RIGHT PLACE FOR INDIAN PAGEANT

Buffalo Bill Declares Morrison Has Proper Environment for the Red Men to Be in Natural Home and Exhibit Should Show Life of Tribes and Pioneers.

A plea that the Indian Pageant of 1915 be held at the Park of the Red Rocks in Morrison was made yesterday by Col. William F. Cody (Buffalo Bill), at a meeting of the Colorado Publicity league at the Savoy hotel. The occasion of the meeting was the visit of Hon. Cato Sells, Indian commissioner, en route to Muskogee, Okla. Judge Sells spoke of the pageant with interest.

"I am interested in your 1915 Indian pageant, and of course hope it will be a great success, but the extent to which the Indian bureau will be able to take part in it is at this time undetermined. The degree of interest I would take in this enterprise would largely depend upon the character of the exhibit.

"If it is to be educational and calculated to give the country a better understanding of the accomplishments of the Indians; if it is the chief purpose to indicate his progress industrially and in an educational way.

EMPHASIZE EFFORTS TO CIVILIZE INDIAN.

"If it emphasizes the efforts of the government towards his civilization and the making of him a citizen on an equality with the white man, then I anticipate that I would be justified in active participation, but action in this respect will have to be determined after more extended information than I now possess.

"I know of the magnificent way of doing things in Denver, and I have confidence to believe that in this, as in all their other undertakings, it will be on the highest possible plane, and then certain to be helpful in the best sense of the word."

Following Judge Sells' speech came that of Colonel Cody, in which the history of the Indian was traced and the plea for the placing of the pageant made. Colonel Cody said:

"I have been very deeply interested in what Commissioner Sells has had to say regarding the Indian. whom I consider one of the noblest race of people on the American continent. The Indian, before the coming of the white man, was peaceably inclined. For instance, when Columbus and the white men who landed first on American soil, the Indians met them with open arms, invited them to land, made them all kinds of presents, everything in their possession; received them with all tokens of friendship, invited them to live with them and make their homes in this great, new land. And this invitation the white man acepted [sic].

WHITE MEN HAVE PRESSED RED MAN BACK.

"Soon after many more white men came. The Indians gave them land to cultivate, killed game for them and brought it to them and helped them in every way that was possible to make them happy. But more and more white people came and they wanted more land, until so many came that the Indian was pressed back toward the Alleghany mountains and the white kept pressing them back, taking their homes from them, making them leave the graves of their forefathers. Finally they were told to pass on beyond the Alleghany mountains, that there was a great country beyond there and that they could have it all. The noble Indians were gradually pressed farther and farther into the wilderness.

"But soon such men as Daniel Boone and others discovered the great country which is now known as Kentucky and Ohio and it was not long before the white man began to flock into that territory and the Indian was pressed farther back. Finally they told him to go west of the Mississippi river and once more the story of the great country beyond which would belong to the Indians forever was told them. It wasn't long before the great states known as Iowa and Missouri and Minnesota were discovered.

"And the Indian, sooner or later, was compelled to give up that country. Then, sixty or seventy years ago, our most able statesmen at Washington said to move the Indians beyond the Missouri river, that there was a great country, filled with buffalo, coyotes, rattlesnakes and so forth, that was only good for the Indians, and let them have it all.

FORCED INDIANS TO FIGHT FOR SELF-PRESERVATION.

"But the Indian was not long permitted to remain in the new territory allotted him. The white men kept gradually pushing backward. The great states now known as Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Colorado and Wyoming were settled by the white men. The Indians, having been driven from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean and back again, wanderers upon the country that they at one time owned, naturally, at last made up their minds that the only way they could hold anything was to fight for it. This brought on the wars which continued for fifty years. But finally the Indian, outnumbered by the whites, was compelled to surrender.

"In my life, I have never known of a treaty made between the United States government and the Indian, that was not first broken, not by the government, but by the white man. Now I feel that it is a fitting thing to do, that in 1915, to bring the representative men from all the Western tribes to some location, some place where they can meet, not only bring the plains Indians, but every state in America that has civilized Indians should send their delegations out here to see how the plains Indians are living. And so, too, that the plains Indians may see and compare their situation with that of the more advanced Indians.

"The customs of the Indians and the story of the Indian should be told by themselves, from their earliest traditions up to the present day, showing the Indian of today with the progress he has made toward civilization and education. This the white man owes to the red man and I am glad to hear Commissioner Sells say that if this could be done on educational lines, his department would not seriously object to it.

DENVER SHOULD SHOW NATURAL ADVANTAGES.

"I think Denver, being in the very heart of the present Indian reservations, that it would be a fitting place to hold such a grand historical pageant. And if it is held near Denver, my opinion is that it should be held at the foot of the Rocky mountains. The Indian loves the mountains. Morning and evenings, he climbs to the loftiest peak around his encampment, and it is upon the mountains and hills that they hold their religious services. Their encampment should be placed on high, healthy ground with plenty of room for their horses and ponies. They like to see their horses around them. And there is no place on the face of the earth that nature has done so much for as it has for Mount Morrison and the Red Rocks. The Indians will simply be religly [sic] impressed by that natural, great ampitheater that God placed there for them.

"There should be the story told of the life of the early pioneer, the miner, the trapper, the freighters, pony expressmen and the stage coachers. There should be duplicates of their dugouts, their log cabins, frontier forts and churches and buildings showing the progress of the West from its old days to the present. These buildings should be erected and placed where they could be left as a permanent asset to the city of Denver and the state of Colorado.

TOURIST WANTS TO SEE GLORIES OF MOUNTAINS.

"Denver has, right at its very door, the greatest natural resource on all the earth. The Garden of the Gods, of course, is beautiful, but it is not to be compared with the Red Rocks near Denver. Great hotels should be erected there and kept open winter and summer, the year around. Denver would benefit by such a resort. It would always have the tourists near the great city. They would not come to spend a day or two in Denver and then go off to other resorts, leaving Denver to see no more of them, they would have a great summer resort here that would hold them, enthrall them, keep them here.

"Some people may say that it is too far away to hold this great pageant. But it is only a few miles more of riding; the cost is comparatively little more, and as Denver and Colorado advertise that this is the greatest scenic state in the Union, why not hold this grand pageant where Denver can make good by showing the grandest scenery in the world? Whereas, should a place like Overland park be taken it would show only a low, marshy piece of land, surrounded by a board fence. The Eastern man would naturally ask about the grand scenery that has been talked about. But to the other place the tourists are given just a little longer ride, just a little more expense and they can be landed right in the heart of the grandest mountain scenery in the world.

"The Indian deserves such a place for his pageant. The tourist deserves such a place of beauty and of wonderful scenery in which to view the pageant — and Denver deserves to place the pageant there that she may show herself to the best possible advantage."

 

THRILL OF ACTUAL BATTLE LEAPS FORTH FROM INDIAN WAR FILMS

Four Miles of Celluloid Negatives Contain the Most Wonderful Pictures Ever Taken — War of Messiah Shown in All Its Harrowing Detail.

(By RYLEY COOPER.)

Up at Pine Ridge, S. D., there is loneliness now and quiet. The little hotel, a blazing center of activity for the last month, has reverted to its old status of quietude. The Indians roam the streets somewhat mournfully, while out where once there sounded the voices of many men and women, where once there echoed loud and disturbing the ["snokome-engo-o-o-o!"?] of the Sioux announcer, all to peace again, and the dull hills once more form the foraging ground of the wandering, hungry coyote. The greatest event that Pine Ridge has known since the War of the Messiah is past. The taking of motion pictures is over.

And that means a great deal, for the motion picture camp which established itself six weeks in the vicinity of Pine Ridge was the greatest the industry had ever known. And it had to be — for that camp was there for the purpose of reproducing history. The various phases of the War of the Messiah, the battles of the War Bonnet and Summit Springs, in which Buffalo Bill played the stellar part, were invidents [sic] of history which could not be reproduced with a few supers in blue coats playing as soldiers and a few more supers dressed to represent Indians. Lieut. Gen. Nelson A. Miles was there. Brig. Gen. Frank D. Baldwin, Brig. Gen. Marion P. Maus, Maj. Gen. Jesse M. Lee and Brig. Gen. Charles King were there — they had seen the original history and they were present to superintend its reproduction. And everything had to come up to the standard set by the generals.

800 SIOUX INDIANS PLAYED THEIR PARTS.

And so, that history might be preserved as truthfully as possible, 800 Sioux Indians, the finest appearing Indians alive today, gathered at Pine Ridge. Tepee after tepee stretched its conical height upon the field. Acre after acre was taken up with tents and tepees and horses and wagons and [travels?] . Hundreds of squaws, hundreds of children — all were present and all were working in the great production.

Across the valley there showed the brown tents of the soldiers — real soldiers, hundreds of them — who had made the long march from Fort Robinson that they might impersonate the various troops which took part in the actual battles of the past. And with them was Col. H. G. Sickel, who was present at the battle of Wounded Knee, and who had come to Pine Ridge, who was present at the battle of Wounded Knee, and who had come to Pine Ridge that he might give his aid in bringing forth history exactly as history was made. More, in Crawford, awaiting the time when he would be needed, was Maj. Carter P. Johnson, an Indian fighter of many years experience, planning the happenings around the fort that he might be ready with every possible event to help the pictures.

OLD TIMERS HOLD GREAT GATHERING.

And the gathering of the old timers that it meant! From everywhere, it seemed, there came men who had fought in the various battles, to gather around the stove at nights with Colonel Cody and the generals and talk of the wars of the past, to hurry out in the daytime and re-enact the fights which they had known in the days of long ago.

There was Philip Wells, who lost his nose, and regained it in the battle of Wounded Knee. There were the generals, with General Miles and General Maus playing bridge, General Baldwin riding and hunting, General Lee telling stories, Colonel Cody enlightening the audience with stories of the Indian sign language. There was Mike Russell of Deadwood, telling the stories of the past which gave him the name of Buckshot Mike. There was Hank Simmons, army wagonmaster of the long ago. There was Maj. John M. Burke, relating the burgling of his famous woodpile during the attack on the agency. And they all had only one thought — the reproduction of history as history happened.

JOHNNY BAKER PETS OLD CHIEFS.

And out at camp where the tepee fires showed through the painted canvas, where the announcers strode here and there calling out the news of the day, where Johnny Baker, champion shot of the world, talked and harangued and petted the old chiefs whom he had known for so many years, there were other survivors of the past.

In a little tent, just under the brow of a hill, dwelt Short Bull, who saw the Messiah and who is blamed (unjustly, he declares,) for the war which followed. A few yards away dwelt Dewy Beard, cousin of Horn Cloud, who fought his own way through the Battle of Wounded Knee, who saw his brothers fall one by one, but kept fighting on. A bit farther on there sounded the guttural voice of Jack Red Cloud, son of the Indian chief who fought the whites every foot of the way. Sitting in front of his tepee was Woman Dress, while No Neck, famous scout, lived nearby. Tottering along came old Flat Iron, 101 years old, they say, waving his scalps, taken in the days of long ago, before him. And when they talked to the white men, these fighters of the past, they talked through the interpretation of Ben American Horse, son of one of the most famous Indian chiefs in the world.

So it was with this company that the battles of the past were reproduced. And these pictures will show in four miles of film the whole happenings of a conspiracy which extended from the north to the south, the east to the west. And all in its right, its chronological order. There is to be shown the starving condition of the Indians in 1888. Then comes the announcement that the Messiah is soon to appear. The Indians seek him out; they come back with their wonderful stories of what is to happen.

Then, band by band, they break for the Bad Lands — and the Bad Lands are shown — great wastes of serrated cones and bluffs and steppes and buttes, great stretches of alkail [sic], great plains of waving grass. There the camp moves for a day to bring about pictures that can be equaled only by the actual Bad Lands themselves.

There is shown, too, the moving armies, and the efforts of the generals to bring in the Indians. The attacks on the rendezvous are shown; how the soldiers drove back the red men inch by inch, foot by foot, to the agency. The Battle of Wounded Knee is shown, the Battle of the Missions and, finally, the surrender. There is not a detail of that whole battle that is neglected on the films.

YELLOW HAWK RIDES BEFORE HIS ARMY.

And when the older battles came — those of the Warbonnet and of Summit Springs, the camera was just as truthful. Again Yellowhead rode before his army, patting his chest, shouting out his prowess as a warrior and calling upon Pahaska to come forth and fight him. Again there shot a streak of humanity from the lines of Eugene Carr's soldiers. Again the struggles, the swing of the tomahawk, the flash of a knife and Buffalo Bill stood holding a scalp aloft and shouting:

"First scalp for Custer!"

So, too, Colonel Cody followed the footsteps to the battle of Summit Springs — and it was in this battle that one of the most spectacular scenes of the pictures occurred — the killing of Tall Bull.

Through ravines and gulleys the Indians fought, striving again and again to regain their camp. And everywhere was Buffalo Bill. Suddenly upon the top of a great spine of rock, Tall Bull rushed forth on his horse and across the canyon. He reached for his rifle. And just at that moment, Buffalo Bill, the object of the death lust of the Indian, saw his danger and whirled. Upon another spine at the opposite side of the canyon the scout rode. He checked his horse. He raised his Winchester. He sighted —.

But wait till you see it!

 

REAL SOLDIERS, REAL INDIANS, REAL HEROES MARCH, FIGHT, DIE, IN GREAT WAR FILMS

Pictured History Drama, That Shows End of Three Hundred Years of Savagery, Comes to Denver Stamped With President Wilson's Approval.

(By FRANCES WAYNE.)

Three hundred years of savagery, hatred, bloodshed brought to a close.

Eight thousand Indians and soldiers trailing, fighting, killing, and then the survivors, marching to martial music under one flag into friendship and peace.

Six of the nation's greatest fighting men, led by the lieutenant general of the United States army, Nelson A. Miles, come again to direct those events that flamed like prairie fire across the pages of our history.

The best beloved American, Colonel Cody (Buffalo Bill), scouting, guiding, conquering, befriending.

All set in a scene such as the good God alone could create and imprinted on six miles of film so that the boys and girls of today, the citizens of tomorrow, may lift their heads a little higher when the word American is uttered.

For two and a half hours yesterday a small group of us watched the unfolding of the story of the Indian wars on a tiny screen in a little office of the General Film company.

This was the Denver tryout of the pictures which came straight from Washington bearing the approving mark of President Wilson, of his cabinet, of official and diplomatic Washington.

Sunday afternoon and for the following week these pictures are to be shown at the Tabor opera house and there every father and mother in Denver should take their boys and girls to let them see with their own eyes how it is that certain men have become, by the written word, heroes in their hearts and imaginations.

Next week — beginning Sunday — should be the red letter week of the school year as it would be a red letter week if some man, long holding back a secret treasure, should come to town and say:

"This moving picture business is not new. See, I have here a picture of the actual Minute Men at Concord who fired the shot heard around the world. I have Washington taking command of the Continental army. I have out soldiers freezing and starving and holding on at Valley Forge. I have Lincoln at Gettysburg and Grant and Lee at Appomattox."

Nothing Could Be More Thrilling.

Would we rush and crowd and jostle to see them?. We would see nothing more thrilling, more dignified, or more American than we see in these pictures of the Indian wars which prove there is no place for savagery in our civilization, but there is plenty of room for any man who swears allegiance to our flag and institutions and proves himself brave and loyal.

The picture story opens with the introduction of Lieutenant General Nelson A. Miles, Major General Jesse M. Lee, Major General Charles King, Brigadier General Frank Baldwin, Brigadier General Marion P. Maus, Colonel H. C. Sickles, Colonel William Cody and the gallant Fifth United States cavalry, all participants in the original events.

They stand against a pallid plain stretching to the gray horizon. There is a flurry of snow, in the air — just as there was a flurry of snow when the battles they directed were fought and won. Then onto the screen comes the figure of Chief Tall Bull crowned with feathers, resplendent in beads and buckskin and facing the future that is hidden behind a curtain of gold made by the sunset.

Way back in '69 the last chapter of these Indian wars begins at Summit Springs. Chief Tall Bull had been making trouble with his dog soldiers — regenades [sic] from every tribe. For 1,800 miles over a barren, forbidding country Cody, Carr and King followed, fought, fought, and worsted them, and Tall Bull bit dust under Cody's knife.

All this we see; the bleak country, the troops striking camp, the long desolate marches, the dangerous reconnoiters of brave scouts, their discovery by the Indians; for a moment our blood stops flowing until we see them escape and rejoin their comrades. Every second is one of breath suspended thrills.

Chief Yellowhand Rides Forth.

Then comes the battle of War Bonnet creek when Chief Yellow Hand, hearing that his hated enemy, Cody, is acting as scout for General Wesley Merritt's command, rides out before the angered Ogolallah [sic] Red-Top Sioux with a defiant challenge.

A duncolored world stretches before us. For a long time we wait and suddenly over the top of a bluff we see the feathered head-piece of the chief. He comes riding like the wind into the camera's eye. In the foreground in a cloud of dust come the troops headed by Cody and Merritt, and then at last the hand-to-hand tussle between the scout and chief, ending in Yellow Hand's death at Cody's hand.

The Ogolallah Red-Top Sioux were on their way to join the band of Sitting Bull in the north and had been stopped by Merritt, Carr and Cody and their gallant fighting men. Though they never effected the meeting Sitting Bull comes into the picture: a picture of such [...?] suspense, desperate fighting that the palms of one's [photo] Buffalo Bill Telling the Kiddies Indian Stories. hands are wet and one's lips are dry when the flicker and flash denoting the act's end comes.

A deep religious element comes into these pictures when the Messiah appears unto and heads them toward extermination at Wounded Knee and the Mission. With his words this stranger tells the feathered braves that by donning the ghost shirt they will come again into possession of lands; they will be protected from death; they will be happy. From this word spoken, from a towering cliff, the pictures become one splendid panorama of brave deeds, superb horsemanship, of nature in that violent, destructive mood that produced the bad lands of South Dakota — than which the mind of Dante conceived nothing more desolate or terrible.

There Miles and Baldwin, King, Maus and Captain Wallace, Lieutenants Garlington, Hawthorne, MacKensie, Father Craft and the Seventh cavalry and the scouts take the spotlight, while of the Indians we have Big Foot, Short Bull, Red Cloud and their tribes, and that strange new fury, the Hotchkiss gun, which the Indians described as "shooting today, killing tomorrow," comes here to play its part in modern warfare.

Splendid drama is here; indescribable courage; craft, cunning, cruelty pitted against brains, experience, knowledge, science and in the end those unforgettable tableaux wherein General Lee, as the friend of the hitherto unconquered Brules, and Major Burke for the Ogolallah, give pledge of their submission and our friendship, and General Miles receives their oath of allegiance.

The review of the victorious troops in a biting snowstorm, bands playing, guidons fluttering, flags waving and the final exit of the twenty-seven chiefs who give themselves as hostage to the nation, forms a memory that must be counted with those large ventures which are the high lights of life.

No boy or girl should be allowed to miss these pictures. If you are a lonely man or woman pick up some equally lonely kiddie and take him for an afternoon with the great leaders of our army, with the great chiefs of our Indian tribes and two hours in the open world that has been made sacred by heroic blood of the nation's fighting heroes.

 

GARRISON URGES VAST ARMY OF CITIZENS AS U. S. RESERVE IN PREPARATION FOR WAR

SNAPSHOTS OF SECRETARY OF WAR GARRISON MEETING BUFFALO BILL

[photo]

1 — Secretary Garrison shaking hands with Buffalo Bill.

[photo]

2 — "We are just looking over the checkerboard before we see how we are going to play the game," said Secretary Garrison to Hugh O'Neill of The Denver Post during his interview.

[photo]

3 — "Colonel Cody, it is an honor and a pleasure to meet here such a distinguished servant of his country," said Secretary Garrison as he met Buffalo Bill.

 

THRILLING INDIAN WAR PICTURES AT TABOR

Changing of Route of "Candy Shop" Makes Possible the Staging of Great Photo Drama.

BY POLLY PRY.

The changing of the route of "The Candy Shop" company to accommodate several coast cities that were anxious to see the big show, left the Tabor open for the engagement of the most wonderful photo-drama ever staged.

A seven-reel series of "Indian War Pictures," in which Lieut. Gen. Nelson A. Miles, Maj. Gen. Jesse M. Lee, Maj. Gen. Charles King, Brig. Gen. Frank Baldwin, Brig. Gen. Marion P. Maus, Col. H. C. Sickles, with the gallant Seventh and Twelfth United States cavalry, and that greatest of the great scouts, Col. W. F. Cody (Buffalo Bill), the most picturesque figure of our Indian wars, are all seen with the remnants of the tribes of the Cheyennes, Brules, Sioux and Crows, re-enacting the famous battles in which they wrote their names in the crimson of daring deeds upon the scroll of immortal history.

Marvelous Story Preserved.

Aided by the government, these gallant officers, whose lives have been devoted to the defense of their country, and their no less gallant foes, in their last desperate struggle for supremacy, went out into those terrible bad lands of our Northwest, and while the camera men turned their lens upon them once more set the mighty stage, and with an art that was little short of magical, reproduced a series of pictures which will forever preserve the marvelous story of the final efforts of our warlike red brothers to hold their own against the white invaders.

Nothing more picturesque, more thrillingly entertaining, was ever staged. It is not a play; it is a graphic depiction of a mighty reality, in which every American has had some fragment of personal interest. It is not old; it happened yesteryear, when these great generals and great scouts, who are today vigorous old men, were in their prime. They rode then, as now, like centaurs. Our fathers and mothers, and many of ourselves, remember the thrilling horror of these wild battles with these bloodthirsty wild men. No historian has ever been able to write the story of those days as these cameras have caught it; no artist can paint it; no man can tell it. It needs the vast open spaces, the wild land, which He heaved up on end, sternly forbidding, desolately repelling. The wind-swept stretches with their jagged skyline biting into the flaming sky, against which the lonely Indian outpost stands vividly pictured. It needs the solid phalanx of cavalry, drooping beneath the icy cold winds, as, wrapped in their great-coats, they ride across the limitless, snow-covered steppes of our mighty West.

Has All the Action of Conflict.

It needs the action, the terrorizing fight, the hand-to-hand conflict, the rush and swirl, the clouds of smoke, the pitching forms of stricken humanity, the sight of women and little children huddled in tepee and ravine — to bring home to you the human tragedies that these battles stood for. And all these things are in these great government pictures, which in all the essential details are faithful portrayals of historic battles, participated in by many of the noted survivors on both sides.

Every school boy in Denver should see these pictures as an educational affair. He will see the horror of real war, and he will also see the heroism

 

BUFFALO BILL INDIAN WAR PICTURES BRING TEARS TO MAJOR BURKE, 'THE PEACEMAKER'

Realism Makes Old Scout Live Over Days of Last War With Reds.

Memory of Heroes Killed When Parleys Failed Sadden Spectator.

After the "Buffalo Bill" Indian War Pictures were privately inspected yesterday at the Central Film company's screen parlor, 'mid rounds of applause as the American flag, floating in motion, signaled the finish, and as the lights went up, Maj. Burke was noticed to dry moisture from his eyes. One of the enthusiasts, who knew the major's interest in the subject, slapped him approvingly on the shoulder, saying:

"Ain't they immense?"

Then asked: "What's matter, major, got cold in your eyes?"

"The deuce, no! Got a warmth in my heart from a burning fire of memories stirred by the realism," replied the major.

"Ah, when one comes to think, I suppose you are stirred by reminiscences of events and the people figuring in them?"

"Yes, for it is joyful to see the living old timers, Generals Miles, Maus, King, Lee and Baldwin, scouts and Indians one knows in the saddle; but it is handicapped by the rapid-fire thoughts that bring to memory those who have passed away. You see, I was there at Pine Ridge, and for three decades with Buffalo Bill had, like him, outgrown earlier antipathies and formed a strong friendship for 'Poor Lo.' Buffalo Bill and his exhibition was in Europe at the time the Messiah craze was growing. From information received, through our Indians, he learned that trouble was brewing. Our Indians wished to return, as their friends and relatives were in an excited state and wanted them to come home.

RENTS PLACE FOR SHOW AND HURRIES TO U. S.

"It was an embarrassing position. Buffalo Bill had never missed a campaign, so he settled the matter by closing the exhibition, renting an old castle and 2,000 acres of land near Strasburg, Alsace-Loraine, and located the cowboys, Mexicans, employes, horses, buffalo, etc., there for the winter at grand expense. He took a fast train to Havre, crossed to England, took a fast steamer to New York through to Washington, visited General Miles, commander of the department of the West, and undertook a mission to visit "Sitting Bull" and induce him to drop the agitation and 'come in.' When he was within thirty miles of Sitting Bull's camp a courier overtook him with a countermanding order from President Harrison, who afterwards regretted it, as the result was, as the films show, that Sitting Bull was killed and 'brought in.'

"I took the seventy-five Indians via Antwerp, Philadelphia; consulted with the Indian department in Washington. Presidet [sic] Harrison received us and invoked the Indians to use their influence for peace. So, after a trip of say 5,800 miles, we landed at the scene of excitement a few hours after the Seventh cavalry. Colonel Cody returned to Nebraska, and as brigadier general of the Nebraska National guards, came to Pine Ridge, and there is no doubt in my mind but that his presence assisted materially, as we had some 2,000 Indians, who had traveled with us, and without exception [photo] Maj. John M Burke, from a photograph showing him as he appeared twenty-four years ago, in 1890, at Pine Ridge. they acted either as enlisted Indian scouts or as neutrals.

TRY IN EVERY WAY TO CALM FANATIC INDIANS.

"It was thus that I acted in every way possible through my personal influences to bring about a better feeling with such good men as Young Man Afraid of His Horses, Rocky Bear, Low Neck, Woman's Dress, Black Heart, Yankton Charlie and others. We assisted every way possible to calm the excited fanatics and frustrate the designs of the disturbers.

"When General Miles' diplomacy had nearly effected it, the incidental and accidental battle of Wounded Knee, the attack on the agency, and the final battle of the Mission were unexpected shocks to our sentiments, and those of the peace-makers. Thus it is that seeing for the first time these vividly realistic scenes reproduced has really turned back the pages of time and refreshing emotions, arousing from oblivion many long lying dormant.

[photo]

Maj. John M. Burke and friendly Indian scouts, No Neck and Woman's Dress.

"For instance, such a thrilling scene as the death of Captain Wallace, who was the life of a Christmas comedy festival just four days previous, who was shot through the body while disarming the Indians and badly bruised with a war club by a blow on the head, but at his feet, when found, were five dead Indians and five empty chambers in his revolver. And Father Craft, badly wounded, who was, like myself, among the peacemakers; then the terror at the agency where I was, seven miles across country, which was attacked at the same time we were, wondering what were the results with Forsythe's command; the overwhelming numbers of Indians in front and the general suggestion of treachery from our neutrals in the rear; the expressions of doubt about the Indian police and the Indian scouts holding true; the howling and singing in the hostile camp, and in the friendliest of the squaws and women singing death songs; the arrival in the night of Forsythe with his dead and wounded, all created a chaotic condition during a long night of horror with campfires smothered and every one on guard; at daylight the arrival of Gen. Guy Henry's Ninth cavalry, the attack on his wagon train which precipitated the battle of the Mission, is something anyone there can never forget, and me especially, as peacemaker's stock and standing depreciated to an extent unknown even in Wall street.

FILMS RECALL EPISODES OF FAMOUS GENERALS.

"The episodes would fill a book; but looking at these pictures, I was thinking of Gen. E. A. Carr, a man with a wonderful record in the Civil war, who had been wounded by an Indian arrow as far back as 1854, and whom Cody guided in the battle just represented at Summit Springs in 1869, who died only a couple of years ago; of Gen. Wesley Merritt, as a young cavalryman so greatly esteemed by Grant as to be called to the attention and introduced to Gen. Robert E. Lee as he was departing from Appomattox after surrendering. He was commander in the battle of War Bonnet Creek, which the pictures show, as it occurred in 1876, and where Buffalo Bill came out victor in his duel with Yellow Hand, so vividly described by Gen. Charles King in his writings.

"General Merritt has passed away. General Wheaton, whom I saw when he defended Washington at the time that Abraham Lincoln was under fire at Fort Stevens in the suburbs, which episode I witnessed; Gen. Jack Hayes among the many military friends and old Red Cloud, American Horse, Rocky Bear, Black Heart; in fact, a lot of my dearly beloved red brothers.

"These memories have rushed through my brain as I was looking at the wonderful results accomplished by the advanced science of motion picture art. I can vouch for the wonderful realism without exaggeration, that these pictures produce. They are a great lesson in the new style of open order fighting which all armies are, you might say, copying from the American Indians' methods."

MANY OFFICERS NOW DEAD RECALLED FROM PICTURES.

"While watching the wonderful, faithful films there passed before my memory many gone from our gaze forever, Generals Forsythe, Whiteside, Corbin, Lieutenant Squires, Lieutenant Kinzie — one a millionaire host for three regiments — on Christmas, and afterwards the hero defender of Pekin, the other with a tenor voice equaling Caruso or Tuffio; Fred Remington, the artist, who would have been with the gallant Lieutenant Casey had he not been confined to the hospital with pneumonia; Captain Capron of artillery fame, who was fighting at San Juan Hill when his son was killed at El Caney.

"Then I thought of Short Bull's fighting chief, Kicking Bear, who was among the hostile prisoners whom the government turned over to me at Chicago to accompany us on a tour of Europe with other Indians — believing it prevented a war in the spring.

"These Indians were taken by General Miles to Fort Sheridan, near Chicago, as hostages. Report back on the reservation was they were all hanged. President Harrison, Major General Commanding Schofield, at Washington, and "Bear Coat" thought it best to send these with Buffalo Bill to Europe with his other Indians. I received and receipted for these from a lieutenant and guard at Chicago as I passed en route to Europe. They traveled there extensively, visited every art gallery and cathedral, Windsor Castle, many palaces, stood at Wellington's tomb in St. Paul's and Sir Walter Raleighs in Westminster Abbey, with its accuratelly [sic] dressed and armed Indians with African negro curly heads on them, were returned to Fort Sheridan as prisoners, eventually went home and became good Indians; Eagle Star, one of the most efficient hostiles, was killed by a horse at Sheffield, was buried with Lone Wolf at West Brompton cemetery, London, near Adelaide Neilson's grave. These and others are now hobnobbing with Peter in Skyland.

"I thought of the little Indian boy found behind the bushes on the day of the battle and the two babies, one of whom died, leaving the now famous baby of the battlefield, who was at the time taken care of by me. Lieut. Guy Preston flew by on his ride from Forsythe with dispatches, flitting across the sixteen miles, through hundreds of Indians — saved by dash — as he reached General Brooks' headquarters, delivered the message, his horse with nostrils streaming with blood, dropping dead in front of headquarters; then Lieut. Charley Taylor 'Whitehat,' now colonel of the Philippines, wounded at Santiago, with his Indian scouts flying back and forth over the hills to the Bad Lands. Kelley (now secretary to W. J. Bryan), Cressey and Allen, press representatives who gamely stuck on the line and picked up dead soldiers' guns and made a record as volunteers.

OTHER HEROES ARE NOW ON BORDER WATCHING MEXICO.

"Then my mind rushed down to the Rio Grande, where now is Col. Pansey Brewer, then of the Seventh; Colonel Guilfoil of the Ninth cavalry, and Lieutenant Hawthorne, who was terribly wounded, a bullet driving his watch into his side, now a colonel; Col. H. C. Sickels, in '90, lieutenant in the Seventh cavalry, a couple of months ago with the Twelfth U. S. cavalry, assisting in producing the pictures he participated in when a leaden hail fell, all now on the Rio Grande 'watching and waiting for the order to charge' — certain to attain one or two stars each when Old Glory crosses to Mexia.

"These pictures meet the requirements of the lesson advocated by my namesake, Professor Burke of the Normal school of San Francisco, who was telegraphically quoted the other day on education as saying: "Teach the young something practical, something real, such as who and what was done by Benjamin Harrison, Nathan Hale, Paul Revere, Brigham Young, Admiral Dewey, Buffalo Bill and Peary' — now they can see our dear old friend Cody still in the saddle — on deck, 'A little disfigured but still in the ring, and proving that game birds can "come back."'

"The youngster can see his last effort and read with greater avidity the history of which the libraries are full, telling of how and what he has done — even when a boy (the original boy scout) as a courier of ten years of age sixty years ago, his great Pony Express ride fifty-four years ago, when two other riders had been killed and he doubled their routes successfully notwithstanding the danger, as recorded by the grand old Denverite, Alexander Majors in his 'Seventy Years on the Plains,' making 322 miles in twenty-two and one-half hours without rest, except changing horses and lunching in the saddle. Of his ride related in Gen. Phil Sheridan's autobiography (get it and read it) forty-nine years ago in a terrible blizzard of 350 miles in less than sixty hours, with only two hours rest, (read Captain Price's History of the Fifth U. S. Cavalry, page 553) where he tells of Cody fifty-three years ago.

CODY'S REPUTATION WON BY BRILLIANT SERVICE.

"In the fall of 1861 Cody was government scout and guide at Fort Larned; 1862 served as scout for the Ninth Kansas cavalry in the Southwest and was noted for conduct in several battles; enlisted in the Seventh Kansas cavalry; was honorably discharged after the war; returned to scout service and was appointed by General Sheridan chief of scouts. His brilliant reputation was earned by faithful and conspicuous service in many campaigns.

"W. F. Cody is one of the best scouts that ever rode at the head of a column of cavalry on the prairies of the far West.

"Colonel Dodge in 'Thirty Days Among the Indians,' says: 'Really remarkable scouts are very few in numbers — can be counted on the fingers. The services which they are called upon to perform are so important, dangerous and valuable that these men are honored in official reports and become great men on the frontier. Fremont's reports made Kit Carson a renowned man. Custer immortalized California Joe. Generals Sherman, Sheridan, Custer, Merritt, Crook, Miles and Carr made William F. Cody — "Buffalo Bill" — A PLAINS CELEBRITY UNTIL TIME SHALL BE NO MORE.'

"Twenty-three years ago was General Miles' great peace pow wow, now so well known a chapter in Western history at Pine Ridge. Present with him was a man ready to act his part as leader in war or pleader in peace, who had come 5,800 miles voluntarily to answer to the echo of a frontiersman roll call to duty, a man whose name, in the needed trailer days, was recognized as a gilt-edged asset by every unenvious officer, an inspiration to the men, a mark of honor to any regiment — Buffalo Bill.

"Gen. Phil Sheridan indelibly branded his name on the pillars of Fame when, in speaking of him, he said: 'When Bill Cody is with a command I sleep easy; he has always been successful on the trail and victorious in battle. A guide's duties are to prevent disaster and avoid the halo of glory attending a soldier's requiem. Buffalo Bill's pre-eminence and fame lies in the fact that he is living — for a dead scout is not worth a d--n.'

"Gen. Wesley Merritt's great ride to War Bonnet creek in the Custer campaign of 1876 was of great importance, as it relieved General Crook at Goose creek, and as it placed on record the success of Gen. Phil Sheridan's strategy in preventing the junction of hostiles by cutting off the immensely powerful southern Sioux, the Ogallala Red Cloud braves and Brule Sioux, from joining Sitting Bull and probably placing General Terry's command on a similar mournful page of bad scouting as that of the lamented General Custer.

"In these days of war and 'On to Mexico' talk, a valuable topographical lesson in the difficulties in the hilly country like the Bad Lands where the Indians in the Pine Ridge campaign took refuge. It is a rare study of guerilla warfare.

"Gen. Frank Baldwin, so prominently identified with Gen. Miles' campaigns as 'Old Get There,' and among the Indians as 'Chief Never Sleeps,' had some trying reconnoitering around these mystic, natural fortresses.

INDIANS' POSITION LIKE GIBRALTAR FOR STRENGTH.

"As General Miles expressed it, 'They equal Gibraltar,' and the famed pass of Thermopylae was easy going in comparison. This defensive position tested his strategic skill to avoid attacking, which he did successfully, by surrounding the 8,000 active hostiles in double cordon of over eighty miles, forcing a choice of annihilation to those outside — starvation in those entrenched or the eventual peaceful surrender. Generals Miles, Baldwin, Maus and command in that terrible winter campaign of 1891 actually arrived at Pine Ridge in a 40 degree below zero, mile-a-minute blizzard, remembered by old-timers as the blow that formed icicles on camp fires. It's the very atmosphere of Denver's old-time days — every man, woman, child should see this visual history with the veteran lifeblood that makes them edifying.

"By the way, this being a peacemaker is lovely when one can furnish all the sunshine effectively, but when an emergency like that at Pine Ridge arises, when a fellow's action savors more of stupidity than treason, there is a sting of intensity in such remarks as 'Devil take your Indian brats, no one wants the papooses,' and, as, when dear old Gen. Jesse M. Lee and myself went out as peace envoys to the hostile camp, listening to the cheering references to the death of General Canby and the Meeker massacre gave us a little creeping sensation at the root of our scalp locks less pleasant than massage. But everything came out all right in the end.

"Bulldog tenacity, reckless courage appeal to man's animal taste as much over the trucemaker as does his appetite for spring chicken excel that of fried mush, but when one meets the beaming, benign magnetism of Gen. Jesse M. Lee we can see that goodness at least can assist us to grow old gracefully.

"And these pictures will teach this community how interesting would be a properly conducted 'Denver 1915, Westward Ho! Festival' celebrating your over half-century of prosperity. So mingle together, clasp hands, put shoulder to shoulder, assimilating as has the white man and the red, as then will be the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific in the Panama canal wedding of the two long separated oceans and give Denver, with her God-given natural gifts, a historic pageant eclipsing anything ever organized on the American continent — WITH REALITY."

 

COL. CODY SUPERVISES EXHIBITON OF INDIAN WAR FILMS IN CAPITAL

Washington, Feb. 17 — Col. William F. Cody (Buffalo Bill) has been here several days hobnobbing with many of his retired old-time army officer friends for whom he scouted and led in the fierce fighting days of the frontier Indian wars.

The main purpose of his visit at this time is to supervise private exhibitions of the frontier motion pictures taken under the auspices of the war and interior departments in South Dakota and other far West points, last fall. These films show the reproduction of the famous Indian wars of pioneer days. The settings for the pictures have been accepted as historically correct and the films are to be preserved by the government in the archives of the Indian and war departments for the education of future generations.

FAMOUS GENERALS BECOME FILM HEROES.

General Miles, Gen. J. M. Lee, General M. D. Baldwin, General Maus, Gen. Charles King, Colonel Sickles, Colonel Cody and other notable United States army men who participated in the historical Indian battles of the earlier days in the Rocky Mountain regions were the principals in the recently taken moving pictures.

"These pictures depict, among other battles, that of Summit Springs in 1869," Colonel Cody explained to a party of newspaper writers who are to witness a private exhibition of the pictures today. "Gen. C. A. Carr was in command of the government troops and I had the honor to be his chief of scouts.

"It was General Carr," he recalled, "who ridded Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado of the desperate 'Dog Soldier Renegades.' All three of the then territorial legislatures passed resolutions of thanks to General Carr and his command.

RELIEVED CROOKS FROM GREAT PERIL.

Another battle reproduced for the picture films in which Colonel Cody was an active participant was that of "War Bonnet Creek," under General Wesley Merritt and General Carr. They relieved General Crook and his command from great peril, and the motion photographs taken last fall are pronounced to be historically correct portrayals of that famous and perilous rescue.

Other films show the final Indian campaigns and the declaration of perpetual peace after the Ghost Dance war in 1890-91.

"My mission in Washington," says Colonel Cody, "was to deliver these pictures to the government. These particular films are to be filed away in the archives of the war and interior departments and will keep alive in a vivid way the early history recorded in the paving of the way for the settlement of the great West by the government."

COLONEL CODY LOOKS YOUNGER THAN EVER.

The famous scout will be the star attraction this coming season in the Sells-Floto circus and Buffalo Bill (himself).

The Washington Post, in the course of a lengthy article concerning Colonel Cody's presence in Washington, says that:

"Colonel Cody is in fine physical condition and looks younger than he did the last time he appeared in Washington with his show. He is still that picturesque character, full of snap and ginger, straight as an arrow, with a ruddy complexion and long, gray hair, military mustache and goatee."

This was in answer to an unfounded rumor that the noted frontiersman and showman was ill in a Washington hospital.

REALISM UNCANNY IN WAR PICTURES, VERDICT IN EAST

Washington Herald Tells How Notables Viewed Indian Battles.

EVERY DETAIL CORRECT.

Denver Will Have Opportunity to See Them All of Next Week.

The Washington Herald of last Saturday has an elaborate story of the Indian war pictures as presented before the officials of the nation last week. The article which follows, gives an idea of what the people of Denver will be able to see at the Tabor Opera house all next week beginning Sunday afternoon:

Army officers, active and retired, grizzled veterans of the Indian wars, yesterday lived again their battles during two complimentary presentations of moving pictures of frontier battles, in which many of them participated. The pictures were shown first at the Columbia in the afternoon, and the Home Club of the interior department in the evening.

Under the direction of Col. William F. Cody, dear to the hearts of hundreds of thousands the world over as Buffalo Bill, the Indian fights through which he passed as a chief scout with United States troops, were re-enacted last summer on the scenes of the original engagements.

PICTURES ARE ALMOST UNCANNY IN REALISM.

The war department loaned United States troops for the purpose, and the interior department permitted the mobilization of Indians, and then virtually all survivors on both sides of the conflicts were gathered into a council to make the scenes historically correct. The result is a set of films almost uncanny in their realism. The realism was carried even to the point of having officers of general rank, "active and retired, re-enact the parts they played in battles as young lieutenants. Maj. Gen. Miles is seen reviewing again on the plains of South Dakota, the victorious troops following the battle of Wounded Knee, the last battle of the great Indian uprising. And gathered around him are many who sat their horses during the review twenty-two years before. In an earlier picture, Col. H. G. Sickles, now in command of the Twelfth cavalry, is seen scouting on his stomach through the sage brush, in company with Buffalo Bill, watching a wagon train which was about to be attacked by a band of Cheyennes — a part he had played as a young lieutenant, and upon the identical spot.

Many national figures appear in the presentation. Besides Lieutenant General Miles, are Maj. Gen. Jesse M. Lee, Brig. Gen. Charles King, Brig. Gen. Frank Baldwin, Big. Gen. Marion Maus, from the army veterans, and Short Bull, who led in person hundreds of warriors, many veterans of the warpath of the powerful Red Cloud, Ogallalla and Spotted Tail Brule Sioux through the scenes they renacted [sic] in bloody earnest many years before.

The pictures cover scenes from 1876 to 1891 — from the battle of War Bonnet Creek in the Custer campaign, to the end of the Messiah Ghost Dance Craze War — the Pine Ridge campaign.

Many of the scenes are beautiful, many are inspiring, others impress through the terrible realism they show. All defy a detailed description, but the verdict of the audiences who sat spellbound through the two presentations may be indicated from the remark of Brigadier General Hall, a veteran of the Custer campaign and most of the Indian fights.

WAR DEPARTMENT TO PRESERVE THE REELS.

"Bill, I didn't think it could be done," he said, clasping Colonel Cody's hand during the performance at the Columbia. "I didn't think until I saw these pictures that it would be possible to reproduce what we went through out there."

The Columbia performance was given under the auspices of the National Press club. Every seat in the house was filled when Senator Francis E. Warren arose for a brief introduction of Colonel Cody. In the audience were most of the general officers stationed here, among them the adjutant general of the army.

The evening performance at the Home Club of the Interior Department was attended by especially invited guests of Secretary Lane, who, with Secretary Garrison and Maj. Gen. Leonard Wood, has done everything in his power to make the venture a success. Members of the cabinet and their wives, senators and members of congress and military men of this and other nations packed the club to capacity.

One complete set of reels will be preserved in the archives of the war department as a historical record of the frontier campaigns, a record such as never before was taken of a similar set of scenes.

 

GEN. NELSON A. MILES WRITES STORY OF THE GREAT CONSPIRACY

HE GRAPHICALLY TELLS HOW 23 YEARS AGO THREE CENTURIES OF WAR BETWEEN RED MEN AND WHITE ENDED

He Pen Pictures What the Moving Pictures Will Vividly Portray This Week for the Denver Public to Enjoy — A Wonderful Tale of Superstition, Frontier Terror, Bravery, Military Skill and the Final Surrender of the Turbulent Indians to the White Race — The Gallant General Brought About the Triumph of Civilization by Splendid Diplomacy and Hard Fighting — He Now Joins His Old Generals in Securing for the Films and The Government a Perfect Reproduction of Those Fading Historical Scenes.

The following graphic pen picture of the Indian wars occurring within the last quarter of a century is from the facile and brilliant pen of Lieutenant General Nelson A. Miles, great soldier and Indian fighter, who led the white army, and brought about the triumph of civilization. It is a magnificently written, yet simply told narrative, which The Denver Post first presents to the people of this country. Taken in connection with the Indian war pictures to be presented in this city this week, and which have the official indorsement of the government at Washington, the story of General Miles, the hero of those stirring times, is of singular moment. The general gives the history of the supposed coming of "The Messiah," as the Indians understood it; the battle which resulted in the death of Sitting Bull; the uprising and the final surrender in which the power and majesty of the white race was splendidly demonstrated. The portrayal of the end of the Indian wars, the fetching description of that dreary country about the "Bad Lands," when, enveloped in the white mantle of winter, the pacification of the turbulent red men was accomplished largely through the efforts of General Miles is told with the grace and felicity of true literature. It was here there was cast forever into oblivion, all hatred, animosity and revenge between the races. The Post takes pride in presenting, for the first time, the real history of the great conspiracy, the last Indian uprising and the true story of the close of the Indian wars in America.

 

Never in history was there recorded a more desperate heroic defense made by a people for their country than the Indians made for theirs against the overwhelming numbers and aggressions of the white race. For more than two hundred years the red men struggled to retain what they held most sacred — the land of their fathers — an inheritance they prized dearer than life itself. The close of that prolonged and most eventful drama was shadowed in pathos, phantasm and tragedy. The threatened general uprising of all the Indian tribes of the great Middle West in 1890 extended over a great area of country and embraced many thousand more Indians than any other in the history of our country. The confederation of the Six Nations by the Prophet and led by the famous Tecumseh, or the conspiracy of Pontiac, was less formidable than that which threatened the country twenty-two years ago.

The Indians in their native condition were a contented and happy people. They had but one religion; with universal accord they worshiped the Great Spirit. They were grateful that nature supplied them with an abundance of food, raiment and shelter. They appreciated, enjoyed and revered the wonderful works of nature.

GOVERNMENT REPORTS BEST TELL HISTORY.

The history of that widespread conspiracy, involving the peace of half a continent, is best told in the reports of the government officials. In his annual report of 1891 General Miles, commanding the military division, mentions "three causes for the disaffection among the Indians at that time, and what occasioned their hostility toward the white race and the government.

"First — Insufficient food resulting from failure of the government to fulfill its treaty obligations.

"Second — Utter failure of the Indian crops for that and the preceding year.

"Third — Religious fanaticism and false prophecies engendered by designing white men and the delusions of a man pretending to be the Messiah."

General Miles further states:

"The fact that the Indians had not received sufficient food was admitted by the Indian agents and the officers of the government who had the best opportunity of knowing.

"The unfortunate failure of the crops in the plains country during the years of 1889 and 1890 added to the distress and suffering of the Indians. This created a feeling of discontent even among the loyal and well disposed, and added to the feeling of hostility with the element opposed to every process of civilization."

The general also quotes from the report of Brigadier General Ruger, commanding the Department of Dakota, in which he says:

"The commanding officer at Fort Yates, N. D., at the time the Messiah delusion was approaching a climax, says in reference to the disaffection of the Sioux Indians at Standing Rock agency, it is due to the following causes:

"Failure of the government —

"First — To establish an equitable boundary for their reservation.

"Second — To expend a just proportion of the money received from the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad company for the right of way privileges for the benefit of the Indians.

"Third — To issue the certificates of title to allotments as required in the treaty of 1868.

"Fourth — To provide allowance of seeds and agricultural implements to Indians.

"Fifth — To issue to such Indians the full number of domestic animals as provided in treaty of 1868.

"Sixth — To provide comfortable dwellings.

"Seventh — To issue to the Indians full ration as provided in the treaty of 1876.

"Eighth — To issue full annuity supplies as provided in treaty of 1876.

"Ninth — To have clothing and other supplies ready for trade on Aug. 1.

"Tenth — To appropriate money for the payment of Indians for the ponies taken from them by the authority of the government of 1876.

SAME DISREGARD AT OTHER AGENCIES.

"The same disregard of the government in the matter of rations, etc., was experienced at the other Indian agencies, with the inevitable result that the Indians were forced to steal and commit other depredations in order to sustain life.

"In this condition of affairs the Indians, realizing the inevitable and seeing their numbers gradually diminishing and their power weakening, very naturally prayed to their God for some supernatural power to aid them in the restoration of their former independence and the destruction of their enemies. When driven to desperation they were willing to entertain the [pretentions?] and superstitions of deluded, fanatical white men living west of the Rocky mountains. The deep, laid conspiracy and plot to arouse all the hatred and animosity of the savage race against the scattered settlements over that vast area of country is fully recorded in the report by Mr. James Mooney, published by Professor J. W. Powell in the fourteenth annual report of the bureau of ethnology, 1890-1891, in which he gives an account of the white men and Indians concerned in this conspiracy, and also republishes the prophecy of Joseph Smith, Jr., made on the April 2, 1847, in which he proclaimed 'that the Messiah would reveal Himself to man in mortality, in 1890.' Doctrine and Covenants 130, 14, 17 which reads: 'I was once praying very earnestly to know the time of the coming of the Son of Man when I heard a voice speak the following.

"'Joseph, My son: if thou livest until thou art 85 years old, thou shall see the face of the Son of Man.'"

SO-CALLED CHRIST AN INDIAN HALF-BREED.

The man who claimed to be the Christ, or Messiah, was an Indian half breed by the name of "Wovoka." His father, Tavtho or Waughseewaughher, who claimed to be a prophet, was a man of visionary ideas — a dreamer. Following his example, the son became the pliant instrument of designing white men and Indian conspirators. Their emissaries first secretly appeared among the Indians prior to 1889, informing them that in answer to their prayers and in fulfillment of the religious prophecies that had been taught them, the Christ had returned to earth and desired representatives from the different tribes to come to meet him near Pyramid lake, Nevada. "It was not, however, until the autumn of that year that the widespread conspiracy assumed serious character. The instigators first aroused the curiosity of the Indians by some secret method scarcely realized or comprehended by the savages themselves, and persuaded delegations from different tribes of Indians to leave their reservation in November, 1889, and travel toward the setting sun until the Messiah should be revealed to them in human form.

DELEGATES CAME BY CONCERTED ACTION.

"It is remarkable that by concerted actions the delegations from the different tribes left their various reservations, some starting from points a thousand miles apart from others and some traveling fourteen hundred miles into a country unknown to them and in which they had never been before. The delegation from the Sioux, Cheyenne and other tribes secretly leaving their reservations, met at and traveled through the Arapahoe and Shoshone reservations in Wyoming, and thence via the Union Pacific railroad, passed into Utah and there joined by the Gros Ventres, Utes, Snakes, Piegans, Bannocks, Pi-Utes and others, until they came to a large conclave of whites and Indians near Pyramid lake in Nevada, where not less than sixteen of the principal tribes of Indians were represented. With simplicity, yet reserved formality, the Pretender appeared to them, surrounded by a few of his followers, all robed in white in a manner to impress the unsuspecting natives with a feeling of awe and profound veneration. The delegates were told that 'those present were all believers in a new religion; that they were an oppressed people; that the whites and the Indians were all the same, and that the Messiah had returned to them.' So well was this deception played by men masquerading and impersonating the Christ that they made these superstitious savages believe that the so-called Christ could speak all languages, that the whites, who were not of their faith, were to be destroyed, and that all who had faith in the 'new religion' would occupy the earth; that the Messiah would cover the earth with dust and would then 'renew everything as it used to be and make it better.' He told them that all of their dead would be restored to life and come back to earth again; that in [1890?] He would move east, driving before Him vast herds of wild horses, buffalo, elk, deer, antelope, and convert the earth into a happy hunting ground, an ideal Indian heaven; and they must so inform all the people they met. He said that those remaining on earth were to be all good hereafter and they must all be friends to one another; that in the fall of the year (1890) the youth of all the good people would be renewed so that nobody would be more than [40?] years old and after that time the youth of everyone would be renewed in the spring and that 'they would also live forever.' That if any man disobeyed, his tribe would be wiped from the face of the earth; that He would know their thoughts and actions wherever they might be.

DESCRIBED HIM IN MANY WAYS.

"Indian delegates who saww [sic] the so-called Messiah described Him in different ways, some as an Indian, others as a white man. There were undoubtedly several masquerading in the same robes and disguised as one person. They stated that the Messiah taught them various religious ceremonies and incantations, and a sacred dance, and to chant weird and solemn music as:

"'My father has much pity for us,
My father has much pity for us.
I hold out my hands toward him and cry,
I hold out my hands toward him and cry.
The father says this as he comes,
The father says this as he comes.
You shall live, he says, as he comes,
You shall live, he says, as he comes.'

"They were to wear a fight garment like a hunter's frock which, after being sanctified, was believed to be bullet-proof.

"These ceremonials lasted sometimes for four or five days and the warriors were fully initiated in the mysteries of the new faith as taught by the so-called Messiah.

"These men all returned to their various reservations proclaiming the glad tidings that the Messiah had returned to earth and they had met Him face to face; they announced to their relatives and friends what they had learned, fully convinced themselves and convincing others that what they had seen and heard was true. Nothing could so thrill the very souls of an oppressed people as these glad tidings from the Messiah, brought to them by their own trusted messengers. These revelations were received by the Indian tribes with unspeakable joy and thanksgiving; with the wildest demonstrations they manifested their gratitude to the Great Spirit.

BELIEVED PRAYERS HAD BEEN HEARD.

"The Indians fully believed that after years of woe and suffering their prayers had been heard, their sacrifices atoned for and rewarded and that they were to enter into a life of happiness for which they believed nature had originally intended them. The fanaticism and superstition of these people was taken advantage of by their disaffected and designing leaders to encourage them to assume hostilities toward the government and white people.

"When this doctrine reached the waiting tribes of Indians on the return of their emissaries, such persistent enemies of the white race as Sitting Bull and other hostile war chiefs immediately prepared not only to carry out the designs of the so-called Messiah, but to assemble large bodies of Indians and move toward the setting sun to welcome Him in His triumphant march of devastation across the continent. Sitting Bull, the great war chief and head center of the hostile element, sent runners to all the different tribes in the Northwest and even into Canada, notifying them of the design for a general uprising of all Indian tribes, and calling upon them to assemble in the Bad Lands of South Dakota known as the 'Man Values Terror.' That district of country was an ideal Indian stronghold more than 190 square miles in area, the roughest, most precipitous and inaccessible of any on the continent, the object being to make that the general rendezvous for all the hostile Indians of the great Northwest country. This was to be followed by a righteous crusade over the country moving toward the setting sun, devastating the scattered settlements and opening the way for the coming of the Messiah as He moved east in accordance with His premise. The conspiracy had spread over a vast extent of country and the most serious Indian war of our history was imminent. In fact, the peace of an area of country equal to an [empire?] was in peril. The states of Nebraska, the two Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, Utah and Nevada were liable to be overrun by a hungry, wild horde of savages. The Indians would have, in what they believed to be a righteous crusade, looted the scattered homes and lived and traveled upon the domestic stock of the settlers. Pillage would have been followed by raping and devastation.

RELIGIOUS FURORE WAS BEARING FRUIT.

"The religious excitement, aggravated by almost starvation, was bearing fruit. The Indians said they had better die fighting than die a slow death from starvation. They had traded almost everything they had for arms and ammunition.

A good part of the available force of the army having been placed under the command of General Miles, as well as the Indian agencies, he was entrusted with the conduct of the campaign and the suppression of the Indian war.

"The disaffection had developed into a wild frenzy of hostility throughout the different tribes. So general was the alarm of the citizens, the officials of the general government, governors of the states and the press of that part of the country, that all earnestly appealed for aid and protection for the settlements. About 4,000 troops of infantry, cavalry and artillery were assembled from different parts of the country under the command of General J. R. Brooks, Colonels Merriam, Shafter, Carr, Forsyth, Wheaton, Sumner, Tilford; Lieutenant Colonels Polard, Henry, Sanford, Ottley and Caprun.

In November, 1890, hostilities were assumed by more than 2,000 Indians leaving their reservation, destroying their habitations and agricultural implements, and moving to the Bad Lands of South Dakota preparatory to the assembling of all the hostile Indians and a general crusade against the white settlements. To counteract this movement a strong cordon of troops was thrown around the Bad Lands to hold the hostiles in check and prevent reinforcements reaching them, as it was the design of General Miles to anticipate the movements of the Indians and arrest or overpower them in detail before they had time to concentrate in one large body; and it was deemed advisable to secure, if possible, the principal leaders and organizers and remove them for a time from that country. This was successfully accomplished. To this end authority was given Nov. [25?] , 1890, to William F. Cody, a reliable frontiersman, an experienced chief of scouts, to go to Sitting Bull's camp and induce him to come in. If not successful in this, to arrest and remove him to the nearest military station. He was authorized to take a few trusted men with him for that purpose. His mission was suspected or made known to friends of Sitting Bull who prevented the arrest.

ARREST AND DEATH OF SITTING BULL.

"The first measure for the arrest of Sitting Bull having failed, orders were given on December 19, 1890, directing Colonel Drum, the commanding officer, Fort Yates, to make it his personal duty to secure the arrest of Sitting Bull without delay. He directed certain troops of his command under Captain Fechet to make a night march of thirty-five miles to Sitting Bull's camp, and the remainder of the troops to be held in readiness for service.

"The Indian agent selected a body of police composed of Indians in whom he had confidence, who were ordered to the camp of Sitting Bull to make the arrest, to be followed and supported by the troops under Captain Fechet. Had Sitting Bull submitted to the arrest he would have been unharmed and probably alive today. Although urged to submit quietly by the men of his race, clothed with authority of the government, acting as police, he resisted and made a determined effort to avoid going with them, raised a cry of revolt which gathered around him a strong force of his warriors; these opened fire upon the police and a desperate fight ensued in which Sitting Bull and seven of his warriors were killed, and many wounded; not, however, without serious loss to the brave Indian policemen. Six of their number were killed and others seriously wounded. In fact, the whole number would have been massacred had it not been for the timely arrival of Captain Fechet, who quickly made proper exposition of his command and, with his   mounted men and one Hotchkiss gun, drove the warriors surrounding the police, and pursued them through the wooded country for several miles.

"The action of Captain Fechet was gallant, judicious and praiseworthy; going and returning his command marched seventy miles, fought and pursued the Indians, all within seventeen hours, and had the effect of striking the first and most serious blow to the hostile element and of totally destroying it on that reservation.

"Regarding the death of Sitting Bull, his tragic fate was but the ending of a tragic life. Since the days of Pontiac, Tecumseh and Red Jacket, no Indian has had the power of drawing to him so large a following of his race, and moulding and wielding it against the authority of the United States, or of inspiring it with greater animosity against the white race and civilization. In his earlier years he gained a reputation by constantly organizing and leading war and raiding parties and, although not a hereditary chief, was the recognized head of the disaffected element when the Sioux were at war, and in his person was the exponent of the hostile element around which gathered the young, ambitious warriors of the different tribes; and his death, for which he alone was responsible, was a great relief to the country in which he had been the terror for many years. His followers who were not killed were pursued by the troops; a portion surrendered at the Standing Rock agency; the others, with the exception of thirty, went to the reservation to the south, where they were intercepted, and, surrendering their arms, were taken to Forts Bennett and Sully, and kept there for several months under military surveillance. The death of Sitting Bull was most fortunate and opportune, as two hundred trusted warriors with their war ponies and packed equipments were in his camp ready to move the next morning to the Bad Lands, where he would have become the head of the hostile element.

"The next important event was the removal of Hump, who had become disaffected on the Cheyenne river reservation, which was accomplished without violence. For seven years Captain Ewers, Fifth United States infantry, had charge of this chief and his followers, and had gained their confidences and respect.

"At the request of the division commander, Captain Ewers was ordered from Texas to South Dakota and directed to put himself in communication with Hump. That Indian chief was regarded as one of the most dangerous Indians in that part of the country; in fact, so formidable was he considered that the civil agents did not think it possible for Captain Ewers to communicate with him. Captain Ewers promptly acted upon his instructions, proceeded to Fort Bennett and thence with Lieutenant Hale without troops, sixty miles to Hump's camp; he learned that Hump was twenty miles away, and a runner was sent for him. Immediately upon learning that Captain Ewers was in the vicinity, he came to him and was told that the division commander desired him to take his people away from the hostiles and bring them to the nearest military post. He replied that "If General Miles sent for him he would do whatever was desired." He immediately brought his people into Fort Bennett and complied with all the orders and instructions given him, and subsequently rendered valuable service for peace; thus an element regarded as maong [sic] the most dangerous was removed.

"All except thirty of Hump's following returned with him and Captain Ewers to Fort Bennett. The remaining thirty broke away and joined big Foot's band, which, with the addition of twenty or thirty that had escaped from Sitting Bull's camp at Standing Rock agency, increased his following to 116 warriors. Orders were then given for the arrest of this band under Big Foot, which was accomplished by the troops under Lieutenant Colonel Sumner on Dec. 22, 1890. Under the pretense that they (the Indians) would go to their agency at the mouth of the Cheyenne river, on the night of Dec. [23?] , they eluded the troops and started south toward the Indian rendezvous in the Bad Lands, near White river, about forty miles west of the Pine Ridge agency.

"While the hostile Indians were held in the Bad Lands by a strong body of troops, every effort was made to create diversion in the camp, dissuade them from their religious fanatacism [sic] and induce them to return to their allegiance to the government. At the same time the Indians were notified that if they complied with the orders of the military, their rights and interests would be protected.

"The measures taken were having a most desirable effect upon the hostiles, for it was reported in their camp that Sitting Bull and his immediate following had been killed; that Big Foot had been arrested, and that Hump had returned to his allegiance. This discouraged them and with the presence of a strong cordon of troops gradually forcing them back to the agency, and the strong influence brought to bear through the aid of friendly Indians from Pine Ridge, caused them to break camp on December 27, 1890, leave their stronghold and move toward the agency by slow marches.

"The troops under Colonel Carr and Lieutenant Colonels Offley and Sanford were slowly following in communicating and supporting distance; in fact the fires of the Indians were still burning in their camps behind them when the troops moved in to occupy the same grounds.

THE WOUNDED KNEE AFFAIR.

"Although the camp of Big Foot had escaped the troops on the Cheyenne river, the troops on the south were moved so as to prevent them joining the hostile element, and orders were given to the troops under Colonel Carr and General Brooks, not only to intercept the movement of Big Foot and his band, but to cause their arrest. On the 28th day of December, 1890, Lieutenant Colonel Whitside met Big Foot one and one-half miles west of Porcupine creek and demanded his surrender. The band submitted without resistance and moved with the troops seven miles, where they were directed to camp, which they did in position as the commanding officer directed. In order to have sufficient troops on the ground, Colonel Forsyth was ordered to join Lieutenant Colonel Whitside with four troops of cavalry, which, with the company of scouts under Lieutenant Taylor, eight troops of cavalry and four pieces of light artillery, made a force of [...?] fighting men as against [...?] warriors then present in Big Foot's band.

"The unfortunate affair at Wounded Knee the following day, December 29, in which thirty officers and soldiers and 200 Indians (men, women and children) were killed or mortally wounded, prolonged the campaign and made a successful termination more difficult.

"A number of the Indians that had remained peaceable at the Pine Ridge agency became greatly alarmed on learning what had befallen the band of Big Foot, and some of the young warriors went to their assistance. These, on returning with the intelligence of what had occurred, caused a general alarm which resulted in over 2,000 leaving the camps located about the agency to join the hostiles and assume a threatening attitude.

"The Indians from the Bad Lands, under Short Bull and Kicking Bear, would have camped that night of December 29 within four miles of the agency, but on hearing the news of the Big Foot disaster, turned back and reassumed a hostile attitude on White Clay creek, about seventeen miles from the Pine Ridge agency. Thus, instead of camping within a short distance from the agency, the next day, December 20 [sic], found the hostile camp augmented by nearly 1,000 additional Indians.

AFFAIR AT THE MISSION.

"On December 30 a small band of Indians came near the Catholic mission four miles from Pine Ridge, and set fire to one of the small buildings. Colonel Forsyth, with eight troops of the Seventh cavalry and four pieces of artillery, was ordered to go out and drive them away. He moved out, the Indians falling back with some skirmishing until they had proceeded six miles. There the command halted without occupying the commanding hills, and was surrounded by the small force of Indians. Colonel Forsyth sent Lieutenant Guy Preston back for reinforcements. Fortunately, Colonel Henry, with four troops of the Ninth cavalry and one Hotchkiss gun, was in the vicinity, and although the battalion had marched 100 miles within the last twenty-four hours, it moved at once at the sound of the guns. Upon arriving on the ground he made proper disposition of his troops by occupying the adjacent hills, and drove the Indians away, thereby relieving the Seventh cavalry from its perilous position.

RESULTS AND OTHER AFFAIRS.

"These two affairs, viz., at Wounded Knee and what is known as the Mission fight, seriously complicated the situation and increased the difficulty of suppressing the hostile element.

"On the evening of December 28, everything indicated a settlement without a serious loss of life. The result may be summed up in the loss of more than two hundred killed and wounded, delay in bringing the Indians to terms, and causing three thousand additional Indians to be thrown into a condition of animosity, hatred and revenge. The spirit thus engendered made it more difficult to force back, or restore the confidence of the Indians, and for a time it looked as if the difficulty would be insurmountable.

"On December 30, 1890, the wagon train of the Ninth cavalry was attacked by Indians and repulsed by the troops guarding it. On January 3, 1891, attack was made upon Captain Kerr's troop of the Sixth cavalry, then in position between Colonel Carr and Lieutenant Colonel Offley, and quickly and handsomely repulsed by that officer and his troop, aided by the prompt support of Major Tupper's battalion, followed by Colonel Carr. These repulses had a tendency to check the westward movements of the Indians and hold them in position along the White Clay creek until their intense animosity had to some extent subsided.

"Realizing the importance of restoring confidence to those who were not entirely disposed to assume hostilities, General Miles assumed the immediate command of the troops encircling the hostile camp and took station at Pine Ridge where, with his able staff officers, Generals Maus, Baldwin, Humphreys and Major Cloman, he could not only communicate with the camp, but exercise a general supervision over all the commands.

Having a personal knowledge extending over many years of those Indians, most of whose prominent leaders, including Spotted Eagle, Broad Tail, Little Hawk, Kicking Bear and Short Bull, had surrendered to him on the Yellowstone ten years before, he was enabled to bring them to reason and restored confidence.

"Fortunately congress appropriated funds necessary for complying with the obligations of the Sioux treaties, and the division commander was enabled to assure the Indians that the government would respect their rights and necessities. Messengers were sent to them representing the injudicious policy of contending against the government, and assuring them that there was only one safe road, and that was toward the agency to surrender. They were also advised that the powerful commands were so distributed in the immediate vicinity of their camps and at the most important points as to intercept them should they attempt to break through the lines, but if they would comply with the directions of the division commander, they would be assured of his support in order to obtain their rights and privileges under their treaties with the government.

"While the troops were exercising the utmost vigilance and constant care in inclosing the large camp of Indians, leaving as far as possible, no outlet for them to escape, and steadily pressing them back toward Pine Ridge agency, every effort was made to restore confidence and induce them to return. Fortunately, at that time, a change had been made in the administration of Indian affairs. The supply of food had been increased at the agencies and properly distributed; and officers in whom they had confidence and whom they had known for years, were placed in charge. Captain Hurst was given general supervision at the Cheyenne River agency; Captain Lee at Rosebud agency; Captain Ewers was placed in charge of the Cheyennes, and Captain Pierce and Captain Dougherty in charge of Pine Ridge.

"Under the circumstances, with the assurance of good faith at the agencies and from the government and held by a strong cordon of troops encircling them, on January 15, 1891, the Indians moved up White Clay Creek and encamped within easy range of the guns of the large command at Pine Ridge; the troops under General Brooks following immediately behind them, almost pushing them out of their camps. On the following day they moved further in and encamped under the guns of the command and surrendered their entire camp of four thousand Indians, the remainder moving directly to the places of abode they had formerly abandoned. The troops were moved into three strong camps of easy communication, occupying the three points of a triangle, with the Indian camp in the center in close proximity to the troops.

"While in this position they surrendered nearly two hundred rifles and complied with every order given them. Sufficient arms had been surrendered to show their good faith; these arms, together with what had been taken at other places, aggregated in all between six hundred and seven hundred rifles. As an additional guaranty of good faith, the division commander required the persons of Kicking Bear and Short Bull, the two first principal leaders of the hostiles, and twenty other warriors of the same class. These men volunteered to go as hostages for the good faith of their people and as an earnest desire of their disposition to maintain peace in the future. They were placed in wagons and sent twenty-six miles to the railroad and thence by rail to Fort Sheridan, Illinois, there to remain until such time as it might be necessary to guarantee a permanent peace.

"Thus ended what at one time threatened to be the most serious Indian war, and the frontier was again assured of peace and safety from the Indians who, a few weeks prior, had been a terror to all persons living in that sparsely populated country.

"Too much credit cannot be given the troops who endured the hardships and sustained the honor, character and integrity of the government, risking their lives in the effort to restore peace and tranquility, placing themselves between a most formidable body of savages and the unprotected settlements of the frontier in such a way as to avoid the loss of a single life of any of the settlers and establishing peace in that country with the least possible delay. In fact, the time consumed in solving this most difficult problem was remarkably brief, it being but fourteen days from the time Sitting Bull was arrested to the time the Indians were moving in to surrender, and would have encamped within four miles of the agency, had not the disaster of Wounded Knee occurred. Notwithstanding this unfortunate affair, the time occupied was only thirty-two days from the time of the arrest of Sitting Bull until the whole camp of Indians surrendered at Pine Ridge, South Dakota.

RETURN OF INDIANS TO RESERVATION.

"The Brules, the most turbulent of the hostile element, were taken by Captain Lee, in whom they had great confidence, and great reason to respect on account of his thorough justice in the management of their affairs previously, across the country to the Rosebud agency where they belonged, without escort and during the most intense cold of winter.

"The Cheyenne Indians who, but a few days before, were regarded as a most dangerous band, were taken by Captain Ewers, in whom they had not only confidence and respect, but absolute affection, to the north on one of the most difficult journeys ever accomplished in this country, a distance of nearly three hundred miles from Pine Ridge, South Dakota, to the south of Tongue River, Montana, traveling in the intense cold of winter in that desolate country, the ground covered in many places with several feet of snow, and this without an escort of troops. Finally they reached Fort Keogh without loss of life or an Indian committing an unlawful act during that long and perilous journey.

"During the time of intense excitement, the governors of Nebraska and South Dakota placed troops along the line of settlements which gave confidence to the settlers and additional protection to those exposed positions.

"Although the campaign was short, it was not without serious loss. Two excellent officers were killed and one mortally wounded. Captain George D. Wallace, Seventh cavalry, was killed at Wounded Knee, and First Lieutenant Edward W. Casey, Twenty-second infantry, a gallant young officer of great promise, was killed January 7, 1891, near Pine Ridge while making a reconnaissance. First Lieutenant James D. Mann, Seventh cavalry, was mortally wounded at White Clay Creek, December 30, 1890. First Lieutenant Ernest A. Garlington and John C. Greeham, Seventh cavalry, and John J. Kinzie, Second infantry; and Second Lieutenant Harry L. Hawthorne, Second artillery, were wounded at Wounded Knee December 29, 1890. Twenty-eight gallant soldiers were also killed and thirty-eight wounded; some of them have since died."

The last review of the troops before their return to their respective stations was a fitting ceremony to the closing scenes of the war between the races. It was enacted in a dreary country enveloped in its white mantle of midwinter, the cheerless winds sporting with the falling snowflakes or drifting them over the graves of the heroic dead and frozen bodies of the slain, covering in a common oblivion all race animosity, hatred and revenge. Victors and vanquished sleeping the eternal sleep in the solitary, unmarked sepulchre nature alone provided. Deeds of valor and sacrifice were events of the past. The great camp of surrendered Indians stretching for miles along the hillside overlooked the plain where the battalions of infantry, cavalry and artillery were formed. The troops were fully equipped in their winter garb and heavily armed; they presented a formidable appearance and must have impressed the savages with the power and majesty of the white race and the terrible destructive engines of war they had escaped.

It was an impressive scene: strategy, skill, fortitude and civilization had triumphed.

As the frosts of winter disappeared, the sunshine and springtime of a brighter and more peaceful future dawned upon the natives.

The war factors had disappeared and the elements of peace had prevailed. Education, industry and prosperity have blessed the unfortunate race for nearly a quarter of a century.

Extract from annual report of Major General Schofield, commanding United States army, dated Washington, D. C., September 24, 1891:

"The past year was marked by a disturbance among the Sioux Indians.... which threatened to be far more formidable than any Indian war that had occurred in many years.

"He gives the orders of the president's desire to suppress that trouble as promptly and effectivel yas [sic] possible.... The execution of those orders involved the concentration of nearly one-half of the infantry and cavalry of the army and some artillery.

"These movements were necessarily attended with great expense, but happily the result justified the measures adopted which resulted in the suppression of the uprising."

In his annual report for the year 1891 the honorable secretary of war says:

"Referring to the operations of the army last winter during the troubles with the Sioux Indians, this campaign which was made in midwinter in a severe clime, was conducted in a manner deserving commendation.

  [photo]

Nelson A. Miles

General Miles as He Was When the Indians Surrendered, 23 Years Ago.

[photo]

The Gallant Old Indian Fighter, Gen. Nelson A. Miles, as He Looks Today.

INDIAN WARS TO BE SHOWN ON SCREEN

Home Club Will Entertain Men Who Took Part in Battles Which Have Been Reproduced.

Indian fighting on the Western plains will be shown in motion pictures before a distinguished audience at the Home Club, 14 Jackson place, this evening. In the audience will be several persons who participated in the scenes that are to be shown.

The films are not moving picture plays in any sense of the word. Actuated by the fact that events of recent occurrence have been preserved for the future generations in motion pictures, it occurred to Col. William F. Cody ("Buffalo Bill"), and Lieut. Gen. Nelson A. Miles, U. S. A., retired, that some permanent picture record of the Indian campaigns should be made for the files of the War and Interior Departments, before the men who participated in these actions were dead.

Many of the Indians and the soldiers who fought them are living. General Miles and "Buffalo Bill" were in many of the battles. Last summer they accompanied a large party of military heroes to the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska and other sections where Indian campaigns were conducted.

Several battles were reproduced on the old battlefields before a battery of motion picture cameras. The mimic warfare was directed by General Miles, Gen. Jesse M. Lee, Gen. Frank D. Baldwin, Gen. Marion P. Maus, Gen. Charles King, and Gen. H. G. Sickles.

It required three months to take the pictures, after which they were taken to Chicago, where sets were made for the archives of the War and Interior departments. Duplicates were shown at noon today at the Columbia before members and guests of the National Press Club.

This evening's exhibition at the Home Club will be the most important, as invitations have been extended to President Wilson, members of the Cabinet, and many distinguished officials of the Government. Secretary of the Interior Lane, president of the Home Club, will preside.

NOTED INDIAN BATTLES FAITHFULLY DEPICTED

Verdict of Those Who Have Witnessed the Movie Pictures Produced by Col. Cody.

That the famous Indian battles as represented in the motion pictures brought to this city by Col. William F. Cody, popularly known as "Buffalo Bill," are true to life and realistic, was the opinion voiced by the large number of persons who witnessed their exhibition yesterday. The pictures were shon [sic] in the afternoon at the Columbia Theater, under the auspices of the National Press Club and last night at the Home Club. In both gatherings were a number of persons prominent in this country, and several old indian fighters and civil war veterans were included.

Col. Cody, who personally told of the work of making the pictures and the difficulties attendant thereon, explained that no attempt was made to obtain fine stagecraft, but that the only point made was to have them historically correct.

All Guests of Secretary Lane.

Last night's assemblage was composed of guests of Secretary Lane of the Interior Department and included: Mrs. Lane, Secretary of Labor Wilson, former Secretary of the Interior W. L. Fisher, Assistant Secretary of the Interior and Mrs. Jones, Senator and Mrs. Francis E. Warren of Wyoming, Senator and Mrs. Benjamin R. Tillman of South Carolina, Senator John F. Shafroth of Colorado, Representative and Mrs. William R. Smith of Texas, Representative and Mrs. James A. Frear of Wisconsin, Representative and Mrs. Addison T. Smith of Idaho, Representative and Mrs. Phillip P. Campbell of Kansas, Representative William H. Murray of Oklahoma, Representative Nicholas J. Signett of Oregon, Representative and Mrs. Clarence Miller of Minnesota, Representative William Kent of California, Representative and Mrs. James M. Graham of Illinois, Representative and Mrs. John H. Stephens of Texas, Representative and Mrs. John E. Baker of California, Commissioner of Indian Affairs and Mrs. Cato Sells, Commissioner of General Land and Office and Mrs. Clay Tallman, George Otis Smith, director of the geological survey; Thomas Ewing, commissioner of patents; J. A. Holmes, director of the bureau of mines; Dr. Van Barveneld, director mining and metallurgical exhibit of Panama-Pacific exposition; Assistant Commissioner of Indian Affairs and Mrs. E. B. Merritt; Franklin K. Lane, jr.; Dr. and Mrs. Sheap of Idaho and Frank Johnson of Denver.

 

COL. CODY IN THE EAST

INITIAL EXHIBITION OF MOTION PICTURE FILMS

PRESIDENT AND THE CABINET

Unite with Other High Officials in paying Tribute to Buffalo Bill, the World's Greatest Plainsman, Showman and Educator — Motion Pictures the Sensation of the Day

Col. W. F. Cody, the noted plainsman, showman and educator, and the illustrious god-father of the town of Cody, has been in Washington, D. C., during the past week, where he went for the purpose of exhibiting to the president and other high government officials, the motion picture films of Indian warfare and western life which were taken last fall in Wyoming and Nebraska. One of the conditions under which the government soldiers and permitted the Indians to assist in making the pictures was that they were first to be inspected by the secretary of war. Unless he approved the pictures they were not to be exhibited to the public.

Saturday night, the pictures were thrown on the screen before an audience composed of President Wilson and most of the cabinet officers, numerous army officials of high rank and other officials. Col. W. F. Cody, the chief actor in many of the stirring scenes depicted, delivered a lecture as the pictures were being shown and received such an ovation as has been given to few men.

The pictures were enthusiastically applauded and received the emphatic approval of all. Representatives of many of the leading papers were present and all over the east the press has been devoting columns to the praise of Col. Cody and the pictures. That they will prove the sensation of the season is an assured fact.

Regarding the initial exhibition, one of the leading papers of the national capital in Saturday night's edition said:

Official Washington, including members of the cabinet, senators, representatives, chiefs of all departments, tonight fixed their sign of approval on the moving pictures telling the story of historical Indian battles, which were taken under the direction of Col. W. F. Cody.

The private exhibition of these marvelous reels was given at the Home club, which is a social organization of the Interior department under the patronage of Secretary Lane. His was the idea that the exhibition be given in order that the president and all the officialdom might have a chance to see the wonderful educational value of the pictures, as his was the order by which the Indians were assembled on Pine Ridge reservation, the scene of those battles that closed 300 years of savagery and brought the red man into friendly relations with his white conqueror.

As head of the army, Secretary Garrison equally had been interested in preserving to posterity the vivid records of the accomplishments of the troopers. Both Secretaries Lane and Garrison expressed the deepest satisfaction with the pictures, declaring them to be historically correct in every detail. Secretary Garrison placed troops of the federal cavalry at the disposal of Col. Cody, and thus to him as the to Secretare [sic] Lane, is due much credit for these historical documents by which the past ever will be kept alive to those who people the present and the future.

The big feature of the exhibition last night was Col. Cody, who was introduced by Secretary Lane as the man "whose enterprise and genius have given to future generations vivid historical pictures of great events in the Conquest of the West."

Col. Cody, lithe as youth, straight as the arrows that have whizzed about his noble head on many a hard fought battle field, waited until the cheers of greeting subsided and looked with his bright eyes over an audience as distinguished as any ever beheld. The National press club was sponsor for the entertainment and the most noted journalists in the country were present. Sitting here and there in the hall Colonel Cody spied out many of the old Indian fighters, who gave him a salvo of applause, then settled to watch the great story unrolled.

Before the lights went out, however, Senator Warren of Wyoming stepped to the platform to say an emphasizing word as the educational value of the picture and paid a glowing tribute to Colonel Cody.

"I want to present to your favorable notice, he said, "one of the young men of the young state of Wyoming. He is one of my constituents and while a young man, he probably is the oldest and most distinguished of pioneers in America — if not in the world."

"It has been my object and my desire," answered Col. Cody, in replying, "to preserve history by the aid of the camera, with the living participants who took part in the closing of the Indian wars of America. I first preached this subject to Secretary of War Garrison and Secretary of the Interior Lane. They gave me permission for the taking of the pictures on the condition that they be made historically correct, showing the Indian wars and savagery of the Indian and following his progress to the present time.

Secretary Garrison gave permission for the United States troops to participate in this expedition and Secretary Lane authorized the mobilization of such Indians as were required for this purpose.

Into a perfect stillness born of great interest Colonel Cody told how the pictures were the silent witnesses of trailing, finding, fighting or skirmishes and battles which left traces of blood and conflict over thirty years of our nation's history.

"There is a thrilling victorywo [sic]

"There is the thrilling victory of Gen. E. A. Carr at Summitt Springs in 1869," said Col. Cody in that stirring voice of his. "There I took human life when Chief Tall Bull proved the weaker man of us two.

"Then there is the fight of the War Bonnett with Generals Welsey Merritt and E. Carr's famous ride of '76 made to intercept the Ogallala and Brule Sioux from joining Sitting Bull. There, in a hand to hand duel, I dispatched Chief Yellow Hand to the happy hunting grounds from which he never returned to say what he found there."

Telling of this battle, where soldiers dripped with Indian's [sic] blood and Indians washed their hands in soldiers' gore, Cody had the audience spellbound.

Colonel H. C. Sickles and General Nelson A. Miles, with Cody in these campaigns, seemed to live them again in the unrolling films.

"After this," continued Cody, "the Ghost Dance and the Death of Sitting Bull give a high light to another epochmaking incident in our warfare with the Indian.

"Then comes the last stand in the battle of the Wounded Knee and the Mission in 1890. There Captain Wallace, a brave soldier, and Lieutenant Mann, another whose record was without stain, gave their lives. We saw Lieutenant Gurlington, Hawthorne, McKinsie and Father Craft who never knew fear, go down under the wounding knives and arrows and guns of the red men.

"And having been an actor in those early wars, having played my part with all the courage that was in me, courage kept warm and burning by my love for my country and my hope of a better day when all men shall stand as brothers under a common flag I know that the pictures you look at tonight are true to life. They were taken on the actual ground; they were taken under bright or grey skies such as lowered or gleamed on those days; they were commanded by men who commanded then, men and children of tomorrow and the men and women of today, in these pictures have history, true, faithful, reliable. Lieutenant Gen. Nelson Miles — the great 'Bear Coat' — leads today as he led when we were trying to force back the frontier. Then, as now, we knew in him the brave pacificator. Major General Jesse M. Lee, Major Gen. Charles King, Brig. General Frank Baldwin, Brig. General Marion P. Maus, Colonel Sickles, leading and assisting the gallant Twelfth U. S. cavalry, appear.

"Then, as now, the red men followed the teachings of Chief Short Bull. Now, as then we see the Messiah Medicine Man, with the leading warriors of the Red Cloud Sioux.

"And to bring the story out of the past to you of the present, clear, authentic, wonderful, we have used six miles of reels and written a period on three hundred years of hate, antagonism, injustice, heroism, bloodshed, and misunderstanding."

Colonel Cody's story of how he gained the services of his old comrades proved no less interesting than his brief narrative of the battles he has fought. The concluding scenes portraying the progress made by Indians at Pine Ridge and Lawton agencies forms a striking contrast of earlier scenes in which all the red men are shown in savagery. In these last scenes the department chiefs find their justification for being employed by the government to bring the Indian to a new understanding of himself and his place among the citizens of the nation.

So great was the demand on the part of the high officials of the government to see the films and to meet Buffalo bill [sic] that three private exhibitions were given. Regarding one of these exhibitions the Washington Post says:

That the famous Indian battles as represented in the motion pictures brought to this city by Col. W. F. Cody, popularly known as "Buffalo Bill," are true to life and realistic was the opinion voiced b ythe [sic] large number of persons who witnessed their exhibition yesterday. The pictures were shown in the afternoon at the Columbia Theatre, under the auspices of the National press club and last night at the Home Club. In both gatherings were a number of persons prominent in this country and several old Indian fighters and Civil war veterans were included.

Col. Cody, who personally told of the work of making the pictures and the difficulties attendant thereon, explained that no attempt was made to obtain fine stagecraft, but that the only point made was to have them historically correct.

Last night's assemblage was composed of guests of Secretary Lane of the Interior department and included: Mrs. Lane, Secretary of Labor Wilson, former Secretary of the Interior Fisher, Assistant Secretary of the Interior and Mrs. Jones, Senator and Mrs. Francis E. Warren of Wyoming, Senator and Benjamin T. Tillman of South Carolina, Senator John F. Shaffroth of Colorado, Representative and Mrs. James A. Frear of Wisonsin [sic]: Representative and Mrs. Addison T. Smith of Idaho, Representative and Mrs. Philip P. Campbell of Kansas, Representative William H. Murray of of [sic] Oklahoma, Representative Nicholas J. Sinnett of Oregon, Representative and Mrs. Clarence Miller of Minnesota, Representative William Kent of California, Representative and Mrs. James M. Grapham of Illinois, Representative and Mrs. John H. Stephens of Texas; Representative and Mrs. John E. Raker of California; Commissioner of Indian Affairs and Mrs. Cato Sells, Commissioner of General Land Office and Mrs. Clay Tallman; George Ottis Smith, director of the geological survey; Thomas Ewing commissioner of patents; J. A. Holms, director of bureau of mines; Dr. Van Barveneld, director mining and metal lurgical [sic] exhibit of Panama-Pacific exposition; Assistant Commissioner of Indian Affairs and Mrs. E. B. Merritt; Franklin K. Lane, Jr.; Dr. and Mrs. Sheap of Idaho and Frank Johnson of Denver.

 

SUMMIT SPRINGS

By Major General Charles King

DURING the year 1868 all Western Kansas, Southwestern Nebraska and Eastern Colorado had been terrorized by roving bands of renegade Indians, mainly Sioux, Cheyennes and Arapahoes. Many emigrants and settlers had been murdered, many farms and ranches destroyed, many couriers and soldiers ambushed, murdered and frightfully mutilated. The "Smoky Hill" route from Leavenworth and Kansas City to Denver was thickly dotted with graves. The little force of regulars — cavalry and infantry — in the military division of the Missouri had largely been employed in guarding the track-layers and bridge builders of the Pacific railways, and were all too few for the duties demanded of them. Only cavalry could pursue Indians, and when pursued by superior numbers, the warriors scattered over the wide prairies, disappeared in innumerable ravines and valleys, remained in hiding a few days until the troops had passed by; then reassembled and resumed their devilment.

In the spring of '69 General Sheridan determined to put a stop to the mischief. Among the troops designated to take the field was the Fifth regiment of cavalry, eight troops (companies of which marched southwestward from Fort McPherson, Nebraska, and within the week were scouting through the valleys of the Saline and neighboring streams in Kansas. The depredations had become terrifying, and the stories of murder, raping, mutilation and torture told by settlers fleeing eastward for safety inspired the troopers with eager longing to meet the savages. One band in particular, led by the Cheyenne chief, Tall Bull, seemed to have been by far the most cruel and bloodthirsty. Their victims were numbered by the hundred. Their warriors were young braves of different tribes, eager for savage honors and defiant of the authority of chiefs like Spotted Tail, who sought to be at peace with the paleface. Tall Bull was a brute and gloried in it. Men and little children captured by his people died by fearful torture. Women were spared only for a fate more frightful. If Tall Bull and his band could be met, overtaken and overwhelmed, this scourge of the frontier would be swept from the map, and Sheridan looked to the Fifth cavalry to do it.

In all their mettlesome little array the two men most vehemently interested were the major commanding, Eugene A. Carr, who had served in the Civil war with great gallantry as major general of volunteers — and the young chief scout of the regiment, William F. Cody, already known throughout Kansas and Nebraska as "Buffalo Bill." The former was in the prime of his years, brave, ambitious and energetic. The latter was just entering upon the full flush of manhood — tall, slender, beautifully built and proportioned, with clean-cut, handsome features; clear, brilliant eyes, and long, flowing, curling chestnut hair — already an unrivaled shot and rider, and by long odds the most picturesque and popular man in the command — everybody's friend, comrade and favorite. Young as he was, "Bill" Cody had won the faith of the whole regiment, even before the campaign of '69, which was destined to intensify the regard in which he was held.

With the squadrons of the Fifth there rode, too, a motley array of friendly Indians — Pawnees — organized as scouts by Major Frank North, and fitted out by the government with arms and uniforms. The arms they knew how to use; the uniforms they were at a loss how to wear, so wore them anything but uniformly.

AND all this little force, possibly 500 strong, was searching through valleys of the streams north of the Smoky Hill when the dread rumor reached them that Tall Bull had swooped on the German settlements on the Solomon's Fork, far to the west of them, and had murdered most of the luckless settlers. Then, after burning everything they could not carry away, had dragged with them two young wives of the butchered settlers to a fate worse than a thousand deaths.

Almost before the news had spread from lip to lip, there came galloping in search of them couriers from the nearest telegraph station with emphatic dispatches from Sheridan. "Find the trail of Tall Bull's band; recapture those women if a possible thing; pursue and punish those Indians no matter where they go, or where you have to follow," were practically the words. "And that," said Major Carr, "means follow them to Canada, Texas, or hell, if need be, and — gentlemen, we're going." Then, after this impressive close, he looked about him. "Where's Bill?" was the question. There were forty Williams in the command; there was only one "Bill." "Take any Pawnees you want," said Carr, "Strike for Solomon's at once, and find that trail. We follow as quickly as possible."

It was nearly one hundred and fifty miles, but in four days the Fifth were there, finding, as Bill said, "nothing but ruined homes and murdered and mutilated people." They stopped long enough to bury the poor remains, and then for three days more pushed on northwestward on the trail of the foe. The fourth night out, as they slept on the open "bench" by the side of a swift-running stream, with the horses hobbled and dozing, the whole command was suddenly roused by the thunder of a thousand hoofs, a shrill clamor of ear-splitting yells, and a living tornado rushed by the camp, driving forty horse before them, leaving two sentries dead in their tracks, then vanishing into the shadows of night.

Again, a night or two later, the bivouac was roused by sudden attack, but now Carr's sentries were doubled, and the daring warriors got nothing but shots for their pains. The next night, nearly two hundred miles from the scene of the outrage, Cody came upon the first sign that the women they would rescue were still living. In the midst of where the Indians had made their little cook fires, he found the prints of boot heels and slender soles. He found more. Tied to willow twigs were fragments of two calico gowns. In this way the poor tortured creatures had sought to tell of their plight and mutely to beg for aid.

That sight redoubled the energies of the wearied cavalry. Men and horses were gaunt and haggard, but, so they argued, were the Indians by this time. Nearly three hundred miles the trail had led them, and now they were in northeastern Colorado with the Indians still a long day's march ahead.

"It's all very well to order, pursue and punish," said Cody to the major, at last. "We might keep on pursuing forever and only push 'em ahead of us. What we've got to do is to GET 'em, and there's just one way to do it!"

And then he proceeded to tell it.

AT first the cavalry commander was doubtful. Bill's plan was to pretend to give up the chase, to turn away as though marching for home — just the game the cat plays on the mouse. The orders were to follow, to drive them out of the country, and Major Carr feared they might turn back to Kansas and the settlements again. "They won't," said Cody, "they've got scalps and booty enough now to make every Indian envious from the Platte to the Yellowstone. They want to go up there, captives, plunder and all — and just brag about it. If you'll only pull out toward home for a day or two, they'll take it easy and loaf along for a week; then we can make wide circuit for the fords of the Platte and head 'em."

And Carr saw the force of it, ordered accordingly; and so brought on the crowning triumph of the campaign and the total annihilation of Tall Bull and most of his band.

Three days later, at sunset of the 10th of July, after a long round-about march, the squadrons were unsaddling in the shelter of a ravine when Cody came galloping in, weary from a long day's scouting, but alive with hope, energy and enthusiasm. "We've got 'em, sir!" he cried. "Their trail is heading stright [sic] for the South Platte not six hours old, when I left it. I'm betting they'll camp tonight at the Springs in the sand hills. We can circle 'em before morning and hit 'em from the north tomorrow."

And so it was settled. Leaving with the wagons all weak or wornout men and horses, with just three hundred picked officers, troopers, and Pawnee scouts, Carr started at 2 in the morning, jogged forty miles clear around within sight of the old Valley Stage Station on the Platte, then hid his men in the ravines to await Cody's next report, and shortly after noon in he came, his long curls streaming in the rising wind. "The whole outfit's camped six miles off to the west, close to the Springs! You can see the pony herd with your glasses, sir, from that ridge out yonder."

THE final plans were quickly made. Then "mount!" was the order and away they went, twisting and turning, keeping screened by the ridges and divides, until just after 3 o'clock, with the sun well aslant, and a fierce gale sweeping down from the Rockies, the whole command swung out of saddle; the major, with Captain Walker, Cody and North, crept to the top of a low ridge to the southward, and there against the slopes, two miles away, they saw the great herd of ponies peacefully grazing. There from the low ground about the Springs the smoke from the "tepees" could be dimly seen driving thinly away eastward.

Already, back in the sheltered "swale" where the squadrons were eagerly waiting, the Pawnee scouts were stripping off Uncle Sam's uniforms and painting themselves for savage battle. Already the word was going around among the troopers, "Watch out for the women. See that no harm comes to them." And presently, with the battle light in their eyes, the leaders came scurrying back. "Mount!" again was the order — no danger of the Indians hearing it in that gale. Then came the swift instructions. Captain Maley, with his men and the Pawnee scouts to round the east end of the village and stampede the herd — Captain Sumner, with his fine squadron, to sweep on the other flank; Lieutenant Price, with thirty men, to circle to the west and shut off possible fugitives, and Captain Walker, with about one hundred and thirty officers and men, to charge from the north square at the half hidden village. In ten minutes they were off. A swift trot of 600 yards brought them to a little rise beyond which, 600 yards further, and just across the low ground at the Springs, lay the village, full a third of a mile in length.

Even before they reached the low crest, which had hitherto hidden them, an Indian herder, far up the distant slope to the south had sighted the appalling and utterly unlooked-for apparition.

Lashing his pony to headlong speed and screeching shrill warning, he was darting straight for the village — all too late. "Charge!" was the cry from the troop leaders, and with one thrilling cheer, the little command drove at tearing gallop into the very heart of the village, carbines and revolvers plying their deadly work — Cody spurring straight for the lodge of the chief, for something told him the captives were there to be found, and there in all the turmoil and confusion he came suddenly upon them — one poor woman, already weltering in her blood, the other struggling with the red fiends who were hacking at her with their hatchets. To shoot or scatter these was but the work of a second, for a dozen stout troopers were at his heels. Then right, left and everywhere their comrades were darting about the lodges, hurling them to earth where possible and battling fiercely with the few Indians that showed fight. The herder died gamely in the midst of the village; but most of the "bucks," leaving the women and children to look out for themselves, had bounded on the war pony each keeps tethered at his lodge, and so scampered away for safety.

NEVER dreaming that the cavalry could or would march one hundred and fifty miles in less than three days, and never expecting them from the north, the surprise was complete. Forty of their number fell before they could escape, but all of the village, all the women, children, old men, a thousand head of horses, hundreds of robes, skins and stacks of provisions fell into the hands of the troops.

In vain Tall Bull, exhorting his bewildered warriors, came circling back about the spot. His braves had had too much already, and he, himself, galloping past the head of a ravine, was shot from his saddle by Cody's unerring aim, and the "Scourge of Kansas" lay dead in his tracks and his band was scattered forever.

That night the soldiers poured into the lap of the one rescued woman all the money they found in the lodges, almost fifteen hundred dollars, every penny of which had been ravished by the Indians from ruined homes. That night they counted and buried the Indian dead; all warriors, and later took the living as prisoners to Fort Sedgwick. That night the major commanding formally thanked in the name of the Fifth cavalry their gallant chief scout for his invaluable services, and Tall Bull's splendid racer was given to Cody as his souvenir of Summit Springs.

It is pleasant to recall that the legislatures of Colorado and Nebraska passed resolutions, thanking the officers and men of the Fifth cavalry for ridding the territory for all time of the fiercest and most blood-thirsty enemy they had ever known — the Cheyenne Chief Tall Bull and his murderous band.

  [illustration]

GEE, STELL, THEM INDIAN PICTURES MADE FAY WANT TO BE SCALPER

(By FAY KING.)

"An' here comes a long string of white covered wagons across the plains, filled with white folks comin' West. The wagons look like they got sunbonnets on. But, horrors, here comes an' Indian along on horseback an' the minute he spies them wagons he flops the horse down on its side and lays down by it, so the folks in the wagon can't see him, an' he watches awhile an' then he scoots off to tell the other Indians.

The wagon train comes to a stop and they start fixin' up a camp for the night. They unfasten the horses and take the rows from in back of the wagons. Then the women folks start the camp fires and they don't know what's in store for them. And the first thing you know, quicker than a flash, here comes the Indians tearing down over the plain, and they gallop around the camp, hollering and shooting, and the white folks don't stand a ghost of a show.

They kill off the white men and take the white women prisoners. They tie a rope around 'em and make 'em walk long side of the horse. Gee, your hair just stands on your head and you want to scream, Stell. And they burn all the wagons.

Next morning, Colonel Cody, our dear old Buffalo Bill, comes ridin' along an when he sees what has been done he's mighty sore at the redskins, an' when he finds a woman's shoe he knows that the Indians have taken the white women as prisoners, an' he sets out on their trail.

BUFFALO BILL RESCUES ONE OF THE WOMEN.

The Indians take the women to their camp, but the women have managed to drop bits of their dresses by the way, and Colonel Cody finds these an' he manages to arrive just in time to save one of the women from bein' killed, but the Indians had killed the other one already —

Oh, I tell you, Stell, you just thrill through and through when you see Buffalo Bill tearin' in on the scene just like the hero in a melodrama. You just want to jump right into the picture and kiss him!

An' say! You ought to see where Buffalo Bill meets Yellow Hand, the Indian chief that just hated him worse than anything. You see, Yellow Hand with his gang was headin' toward Buffalo Bill and his gang, an' when he sees Big Chief Cody he just came dashin' right on ahead with a big knife in his mitt, an' Cody just tore up to him, too, an' when they came together they hopped off their ponies an' had it out right then an' there. They struggled together rough an' tumble until OUR BILL monogrammed Yellow Hand's heart an' the redskin took his vacation in The Happy Hunting Grounds.

SEVEN-DAY WAR TANGO IS STARTED BY "MESSIAH."

An', Stell, gee them Indians was easy! You see how this great last Rebellion started was the Indians was mighty poor, their crops had failed an' they was sore at the world in general and at the white men in particular. When along comes a feller who says he's a Messiah, returned to help the Indians. He tells 'em that he will provide them with big crops, lots of buffalo an' it turned out to be a lot of Buffalo Bills, an' he told 'em that he'd help them get even with the white men. He gave them a part of a shirt that when made of white and blessed by the medicine man was supposed to be bullet proof. Well, an' they fell for that guy's monologue an' got so excited over their new good fortune that they started one of those seven-day war tangoes.

An' say, Stell, you ought to see them fat squaws do the Wig Wam Wiggle! I just sat there an' holered [sic]! An' the costumes — class, kid — class! Why those Indians could give Gaby cards an' spades when it comes to wild head gear. The squaws were all togged out in their regular scenery, too. An' maybe you think those togs aren't worth a handful of beans, but let me tell you, they are all trimmed with elk teeth and some of them are worth a couple of thousand dollars.

FAY WANTS TO SCALP ALL IN THE AUDIENCE.

Well, anyway, Stell, they got so anxious to get the white folks' goat that they started out after them, but, of course, Buffalo Bill an' the rest of the American soldiers was right on the job, an' say, if you want to have new thrills just set through that Indian war an' listen to that bugle, an' all the national airs, not to mention the Indian music — Good night! You just think you're right there, that's all. Why, it's all you can do to keep from marchin' up an' down the isle [sic], scalpin' the audience!

There's a lot of thrillin' fightin' right down on the battle field. You can see every bit of it. You see the calvary [sic] charge this way and that, and run across the plain until it looks like a great band of mourning. You see the Indians come running at full speed on their ponies and fall like a log to the ground, dead! By goll, Stells, those Indians can act!

You see the Indians driven into a ravine an' the Hotchkiss gun turned on them, an' it kills 'em like flies! They used to call it the "gun that shoots today and kills tomorrow" because the bullets don't explode until they reach their destination.

Well, finally the Indians surrender. The soldiers take them to Wounded Knee and there camp is pitched for the knight. The Indians are all on one side an' the soldiers on the other. An' there's a guard of soldiers around the Indians as close as posts in a fence.

FIELD LOOKS LIKE FLY PAPER AFTER FIGHTING.

When dawn breaks they make the Indians give up their arms. An' they do until one tough old buck reniggs [sic], an' say, Stell, in a jiffy that place is turned into a slaughter house. That field looked like a piece of fly paper on a hot day, when the skirmish was over.

Well, after that the war was over an' then the different commanders escorted the various tribes to their reservations. That's one great sight — to see those long parades of Indians in their gally-galorious costumes slowly riding behind the soldiers, with the fat, funny squaws trudging along, draggin' the wig wams behind them.

Aw, an' that ain't half all that's great. Now, Stell, for goodness sakes, don't you an' Steve miss seein' them war pictures, 'cause if you don't, you're goin' to regret it for the rest of your life. They are the greatest ever, an' they'll be at the Tabor Grand Opera House all this week. Now, take it from your little pal, and go see 'EM!

Buffalo Bill himself is there, too! an' you'll lose your heart to him, sure, Stell — I always do!

INDIAN WARS

The Indian wars for fifty years
On stream and vale and hill
Are now produced with moving slides
By brilliant Buffalo Bill!
And here we see the ghost dance craze
Where Indians plan to kill
The cavalry of Uncle Sam
When led by Buffalo Bill!
And in the Miles campaign we see
Baldwin o'er rock and rill,
While shooting down the Indian braves
Charging with bold Buffalo Bill!
And here is Merritt, Carr, and King,
With troops of desperate will,
That slashed the Indians right and left
In front with Buffalo Bill!
Pine Ridge and Wounded Knee can tell,
And also old Fort Sill,
How troopers over mount and plain
Dashed on with Buffalo Bill!
And when their chief, bold Yellow Hand,
Challenged with hate and skill,
He met his fate instanter
And fell by Buffalo Bill!
And Sitting Bull at last defied
Our troops with tyrant will,
But soon was killed in action
By Miles and Buffalo Bill!

-John A. Joyce, in Washington Post.

  [illustration]

The Little Command Drove at a Tearing Gallop into the Very Heart of the Village

 

GREAT AUDIENCE IS HELD IN TENSE WONDER BY THE BUFFALO BILL INDIAN WAR PICTURES

Famous Scout Tells How He Conceived the Plan of Perpetuating This Page of American History and Of Being Given Financial Backing in Denver.

BEFORE an audience that occupied every seat in the Tabor yesterday afternoon, the historical pictures of the famous Indian wars were first publicly presented and were received with continuous applause and enthusiasm.

Before the great crowd Colonel Cody — Buffalo Bill — appeared at the outset and delivered a preliminary address, which was pathetic, humorous, eloquent and illuminative. He gave the history of the pictures with a simplicity and ease that won for him the hearts and admiration of his hearers.

He told of the financial downfall of his great Indian Wild West show in the city last year, when he found himself surrounded by sheriffs, lawyers and debts, after having entertained, on two continents, more royalty and more people than had ever witnessed any single entertainment in the wide world. Broken financially and down on his luck, but determined to remain in the game, the colonel said he went into the wilderness, and by the [side?] of the beautiful Shoshones, he figured out how he would recuperate his dwindled fortunes.

He had an idea. He thought of his long career on the plains, of the wars he had been in; of the Indian battles he had fought; of the advance of white civilization through many stirring years, and he thought this page of thrilling American history should be perpetuated for the benefit of this and future generations.

*****

The new art of moving pictures made it possible to reproduce some wonderful fights. But to accomplish all this it was necessary to have the approval and help of the government, a strong financial backing and the sanction of the famous generals who had helped to make history. He heard, while in the wilderness, that the secretary of war was in Colorado. "So," said Cody, "I chased myself down to Denver, met Mr. Garrison, laid my idea before him and he gave it cordial approval, promising the hearty support of the war department.

LANE PROMISES TO GIVE SUPPORT

"Later I saw Secretary of the Interior Lane at Colorado Springs and asked his cooperation. He had the Indians under his supervision. He was a necessary factor. He took to the proposition warmly.

"Next I had to have money. It would take $100,000. I didn't have a dollar. I went to Tammen and Bonfils of your city and asked them if they would back me. There was no hesitation. 'Go as far as you like, Bill,' they both said. 'We will finance you.'

"Then Tammen and I went East to find the best picture makers the country could produce. We found them in the Essanay people, and Mr. Spoor, the president, gladly agreed to join in the work. 'You are all right, father,' Tammen said to me in Detroit, as we closed the big contract, and then went on and secured the personal aid, co-operation and support of General Miles, General Baldwin, General Lee, General King and all those Indian fighters with whom I had been associated years ago.

"Backed by the national government, they were as keen as I was for a true historical reproduction of the scene that resulted in the final surrender of the Indians to the white race. So the work began. The American troops and the American Indians were at our disposal. We had to pay the latter well. We gave them from two to five dollars a day each for their services. We left with the Indians some $10,000, so you can see what a costly proposition it is.

"We all — General Miles directing — went to the old fighting ground, and there, with wonderful accuracy, we reproduced, after weeks of work, the most wonderful series of Indian war scenes the world has known.

INDORSED BY PRESIDENT WILSON.

"When completed, they had first to be shown to the president and his cabinet at Washington, to receive their approval or disapproval, for, if found satisfactory they were to be placed in the archives of the war department and the interior department. Last week, before the cabinet, the leading senators and diplomats, they were shown in the government building and formally indorsed.

"Then New York wanted them immediately. A manner of inducements of a financial character were made for them to open a new theater. But I held that they must have their premier in the West; in the historic Tabor opera house; in the city that had made it possible for all this to be accomplished. So, ladies and gentlemen, you will see for the first time, these great pictures that mark an epoch in our western history, and which could not have been made but for the support of the Federal government and the financial backing of two of your enterprising citizens."

*****

When Buffalo Bill finished, a storm of applause greeted him. He was a stately, impressive and picturesque figure as he stood there. Many thought him the most extraordinary American living. His presence seemed to lend a thrill to the important event.

Directly following the speech, the pictures were shown, and for over two hours the vast audience was strangely entertained.

It is quite impossible to describe them. They are very wonderful in their realism. They are something we can never see again. The grim and grizzled participants are in the Christmas of their days; their race is nearly run; they can never again be actors on the stage as they were in this tremendous reproduction. The pictures are therefore the only ones that we can ever see. The like we have never seen before. Their splendid accuracy, their lack of posing, their genuineness, their vividness, make them extraordinary. To the young they are an education. To the old a revival of fading memory; to all a display of American patriotism and bravery that cannot be too highly extolled.

WARRIORS WATCH OLD BATTLES WITH INDIANS

Veterans See Themselves in "Movie" Reproduction of Bloody Conflicts of Frontier Campaigns.

"BUFFALO BILL" IS DIRECTOR

Army officers, active and retired, grizzled veterans of the Indian wars, yesterday lived again their battles during two complimentary presentations of moving pictures of frontier battles, in which many of them participated. The pictures were shown first at the Columbia in the afternoon, and the Home Club of the Interior Department in the evening.

Under the direction of Col. William F. Cody, dear to the hearts of hundreds of thousands the world over as Buffalo Bill, the Indian fights through which he passed as a chief scout with United States troops were re-enacted last summer on the scenes of the original engagements.

The War Department loaned United States troops for the purpose, and the Interior Department permitted the mobilization of Indians, and then virtually all survivors on both sides of the conflicts were gathered into a council to make the scenes historically correct. The result is a set of films almost uncanny in their realism. The realism was carried even to the point of having officers of general rank, active and retired, re-enact the parts they played in battles as young lieutenants. Maj. Gen. Miles is seen reviewing again on the plains of South Dakota, the victorious troops following the battle of Wounded Knee, the last battle of the last Indian uprising. And gathered around him are many who sat their horses during the review twenty-two years before. In an earlier picture, Col. H. G. Sickles, now in command of the Twelfth Cavalry, is seen scouting on his stomach through the sage brush, in company with Buffalo Bill, watching a wagon train which was about to be attacked by a band of Cheyennes — a part he had played as a young lieutenant, and upon the identical spot.

Many national figures appear in the presentation. Besides Lieut. Gen. Miles, are Maj. Gen. Jesse M. Lee, Brig. Gen. Charles King, Brig. Gen. Frank Baldwin, Brig. Gen. Marion Maus, from the army veterans, and Short Bull, who led in person hundreds of warriors, many veterans of the warpath of the powerful Red Cloud, Ogallalla and Spotted Tail Brule Sioux through the scenes they re-enacted in bloody earnest many years before.

The pictures cover scenes from 1876 to 1891 — from the battle of War Bonnet Creek in the Custer campaign, to the end of the Messiah Ghost Dance Craze War — the Pine Ridge campaign.

Many of the scenes are beautiful, many are inspiring, others impress through the terrible realism they show. All defy a detailed description, but the verdict of the audiences who sat spell-bound through the two presentations may be indicated from the remark of Brig. Gen. Hall, a veteran of the Custer campaign and most of the Indian fights.

"Bill, I didn't think it could be done," he said, clasping Col. Cody's hand during the performance at the Columbia. "I didn't think until I saw these pictures that it would be possible to reproduce what we went through out there."

The Columbia performance was given under the auspices of the National Press Club. Every seat in the house was filled when Senator Francis E. Warren arose for a brief introduction of Col. Cody. In the audience were most of the general officers stationed here, among them the Adjutant General of the Army.

The evening performance at the Home Club of the Interior Department was attended by especially invited guests of Secretary Lane, who, with Secretary Garrison and Maj. Gen. Leonard Wood, has done everything in his power to make the venture a success. Members of the Cabinet and their wives, Senators and members of Congress and military men of this and other nations packed the club to capacity.

One complete set of reels will be preserved in the archives of the War Department as a historical record of the frontier campaigns, a record such as never before was taken of a similar set of scenes.

 

Grim, Awful War Lives In Indian Revolt Film

Audiences in Tabor Opera House Do Not See Pictures, but Actually Witness Combat So Realistic Is the Acting.

Impressions of Indian Warfare After Seeing the Buffalo Bill War Pictures.

(By HUGH O'NEILL.)

There was the coughing bark of a Hotchkiss gun; a momentary white cloud of smoke curtained the gray landscape; then the first shell in a battle that had lasted for six dragging hours burst on the uneven hillside where five thousand red men were gathered in their last war against this country. They seemed to fall in scores under its splintering missiles like broken reeds in a storm.

A man near me sucked the breath in between clenched teeth and muttered "My God!" He twined and untwined his fingers convulsively. Another clapped his open hand across his mouth to stifle a sob. I heard somebody groan. There was a cackle of hysterical laughter. Then, of a sudden, there fell the silence that only touches the living world when Death is abroad on His business with the implements of wholesale devastation. The echo of an old, forgotten Nunc Dimittis seemed to float pityingly across the listening plains. For a moment we watched the dead and forgot the battle.

On the opposite hills, the cavalry lay dismounted wherever they could find cover. Their carbines had been pitting the air with patches of smoke all the morning. The rattle of the firing was like rain falling on a tin roof. Sometimes a bugle blared and men galloped through the defiles on errands of mystery. A red man, feathered like some foolish fowl, rushed from the midst of his people and waved his gun, shrieking incoherently. A bullet found him and he fell like a shot bird.

The Indians backed up against the hills and fighting with a pathetic courage, yelled to each other and taunted the reaching fingers of Death and fired at anything that moved and only paused when the Hotchkiss coughed again and another shell came [...?] that the day of hand-to-hand fighting was ended.

Ever since the rippling, snow-whipped dawn it had been a running fight, with our cavalry on one side of the ravine and the Indians on the other. In the early afternoon we turned their flank and cut off their retreat. They seemed to realize as we worked in closer on them everywhere that they had either to fight on where they were or surrender. And they had chosen to fight on.

From the opening of the battle it was clear that brains, ordered movements, a higher type of courage were on our side. On theirs was the lust of carnage and hearts that knew no fear and the frenzy that yelled defiance at the echoing gun shots from the indifferent hills.

HOTCHKISS ENDS THE LONG BATTLE.

But when they could retreat no further and lay stark before us against the hillside and the officer commanding drew back his skirmish line and the Hotchkiss lifted its snout and grunted death at them with every shell, the fight that might have lasted another day was being shortened every minute by their increasing dead.

We were in close enough to the Hotchkiss to feel the acrid gases from its smoke stinging our nostrils. As the firing of the carbines ceased and the air cleared we could see the little mounds of dead heaped by the bursting shells on the opposite hillside. Massed together in that way they looked like tents, struck and about to be folded for another march. And each time a shell burst another tent was struck.

From a battle between men it had become an afternoon of methodical, wholesale killing. I heard a man praying in whispers.

Across there in the gray light, with the snow falling thicker, as the sun was going down, those Indians stood out on the hillside to be butchered by our Hotchkiss as no white troops had ever stood in any war. We had them against a wall and we were pounding them to pieces. Sometimes they formed and came charging down the hillside to the ravine as though thus to hasten death. And each time they charged our gunner found the range and they halted and spun round and fell as a stone falls when a shell burst above them.

It was romantic war no longer with its stimulus to courage and its marvels of personal prowess; it was killing reduced to a business.

Protected by the fire of the Hotchkiss some scattered companies of dismounted cavalry were working down the ravine and up on the other side. Between them and the Indians there was a stretch of open country, dotted here and there by the dead who had run out charging from the main body. On the left flank of the Indians we saw several troops of our mounted men ride across the crest of a hill. Then everywhere the battle began again and on every side the poor red men were being crowded and broken by our fire.

A high wind came up from the north and drove the cutting snow in the faces of those of us who merely watched the fight. A troop of cavalry swung past at the trot and an ambulance went bumping down the ruts of the road where a patch of us wounded lay waiting. A soldier with two fingers of his left hand about off came running toward us shouting that it was all damned foolishness. On the hills the sound of carbines firing echoed in a steady, patient way with the sound of hammers driving coffin nails.

DEATH BECOMES A MONOTONY.

The snow fell thicker and the smoke hung low over the land and we were filled with the heavy monotony of death. It was like some nightmare that we had been weeping in through eternity. The whole world was involved in conflict. A man gritted his teeth and muttered, "My God! Why don't they surrender?" and, as if answering him, the bugles, turned to pity, sang "cease firing," and a kind silence fell in where death and turmoil had been keeping bloody house all day.

The smoke drifted from the hillside and plains across where we watched; a group of Indians came stalking down the hill pacing to the funeral of a defeated race; our flag fluttered red and blue and white across the dead gray of the earth and skies; there was a cheer and the sound of tramping feet and the blare of loud music —

And we were recalled to the fact that we were sitting in the Tabor Opera house looking at the moving picture reproduction of the last fight of the Indians of North America against the army of the United States. Hillsides, plains, the moving troops, the dying Indians, the coughing Hotchkiss were no more. Instead there were the lights of the theater and the white screen and a thousand people awaking to the realization of having witnessed the most wonderful spectacle ever produced since moving pictures were invented.

There was nothing "theatrical" about this production. The officers and the cavalrymen and the Indians are not actors mindful all the time of the camera and automatic in the "registration" of their emotions.

They are, instead, the officers and the men of the army of the United States. They were in that war which we have just seen re-enacted. The Indians are not the hired players of some film company; they are the Indians of Pine Ridge agency who made thus their last fight for freedom at this battle of Wounded Knee.

They go about their business as we see them unmindful of everything but the grim business they are on. And their fight along those miles of barren plains and beetling hills has been put into a moving picture so faithfully and wonderfully that — when it is finished and the flag floats in the winds — your pulse is still thumping and your throat is still dry from the acrid powder fumes and your eyes are not guiltless of the tears that came when the poor, foolish red men stood out on that last hill and the Hotchkiss coughed at them its pitiless message of death.

Nothing like this has ever been done before. Nothing to equal it will, perhaps, ever be done again. It is not a "photo play." It is not a series of "staged spectacles." It is War itself; grim, unpitying and terrible; and it holds your heart still as you watch it and leaves you, in the end, amazed and spellbound at the courage and the folly of mankind.

ARMY MEN PLEASED BY FILM BATTLES

Prominent Persons View Motion Picture Production at the Home Club.

Grizzled veterans of the Indian campaigns, members of President Wilson's Cabinet, Congressmen, and a host of other distinguished persons viewed with astonishment moving pictures of the Indian battles of long ago as the guests of the Home Club, 14 Jackson place, last evening.

Secretary Franklin K. Lane, president of the club, and Mrs. Lane received the guests, assisted by the club officers. The room where the pictures were shown was crowded when the first reel was started. Col. William E. Cody ("Buffalo Bill") was not only one of the principal figures in the pictures, but was present in person, and was presented to the guests as they arrived.

The most astonished persons in the audiences at the faithfulness and realism of the pictures were the officers of the army who made them possible by fighting the original battles and who viewed the films for the first time. Brig. Gen. W. P. Hall, who was in many of the battles that were reproduced, declared that he had not believed it was possible to make such pictures.

He expressed himself as amazed at the work of the army officers and Indian chiefs who were shown on the screen, and said that he remembered not only the country in which the battles took place but could also recognize some of the famous maneuvers executed by the troops to outwit the Indians.

Secretary Lane announced that copies of the films would be filed with the records of the War Deaprtment [sic] and Interior Department. It is understood that the films will be exhibited publicly.

The first exhibition of the pictures at the Columbia Theater yesterday afternoon, under the auspices of the Press Club, was attended by a large number of the army officers stationed in Washington, as well as members of Congress, Government officials, newspaper men, and others. The theater was crowded, and the spectators were generous with their applause.

There's Sanguine Warfare on, But It's in "Movies"

History was re-enacted in the Tabor Grand theater Sunday. The Indians clashed with soldiers and scenes of warfare ensued, alright, alright.

"Buffalo Bill" (Col. Wm. F. Cody) introduced his moving pictures of the principal Indian battles from 1876 to 1891 when the last rebellion took place, with a short explanation of the idea that prompted the venture and the object of the pictures.

Hundreds of school children and adults crowded the theater.

Reel after reel of films showed the Indians in camp, dancing the war dances, their scouting the alkali plains for unprotected white settlers, the attack and their final annihilation by the United States troops. The final uprising of the reservation Indians against the authority of the "Great White Father" at Washington is graphically pictured. The pictures will be shown all week.

 

The Battle of War Bonnet Creek

And the Duel of Buffalo Bill and Yellow Hand

By Major General Charles King

[illustration]

THEY FACED EACH OTHER IN DEADLY GRAPPLE.

 

IT was the Centennial summer, and the eyes of the nation seemed focused on Philadelphia. Every art and industry was there represented, and to further attract the array of sightseers from all over the land, "shows" without number had pre-empted every suitable hall or theater in the neighboring cities. And yet, at the very outset of what promised to be a very profitable season, one theatrical company doing a rushing business summarily disbanded. It was the "Buffalo Bill's Own," then playing to crowded houses, and the simple explanation of it all was that the papers had just announced a serious Indian war in the West, and that the Fifth regiment of cavalry had been ordered from the southern plains to hasten to the support of Gen. George Crook's column in Wyoming. This was the regiment which, six and seven years earlier, Cody had guided as chief scout on the campaign against Tall Bull and the Southern Cheyennes, and now their old comrade could not bear the idea of their again going campaigning without him.

The wires had flashed his message to Cheyenne within the hour after he read the news. The wires flashed back to him the answer from the regiment:

"Your old position open to you. Join us here." And for four days thereafter he was eagerly welcomed by every officer and man, as much at home among them as though they had never known a day apart.

One week thereafter, under the orders of General Sheridan, they had forded the North Platte and launched out into the broad lands of the Sioux, ordered to find the route by which the young warriors were quitting the reservations of Red Cloud and Spotted Tail in Northwestern Nebraska, and riding away laden with rations, arms and ammunition, to join the great herds of "hostiles" under the renowned medicine chief, Sitting Bull — Tatonka Eyo Tonka. Their rendezvous was in the heart of the glorious country between the Big Horn range and the Yellowstone. Three columns, commanded respectively by Generals Terry, Crook and Gibbon, were closing in upon them from east, south and west. With Terry rode the famous cavalry leader of the Civil war, George Armstrong Custer. Hurrying to join Crook, and assigned to the command of the Fifth cavalry, came Wesley Merritt, famous even as Custer; and between those three slowly concentrating columns lurked the bands of Sitting Bull, wearily watching every move and waiting a chance to strike. On the 17th of June they swarmed on Crook's force among the bluffs of the Rosebud and brought him to a stand. On the 25th they overwhelmed Custer and his command on the banks of the Little Horn, and though Indians far and wide speedily heard of that bloody victory, not until ten days thereafter was it told to the awe-stricken crowds at the Centennial. Then, people along the Delaware began to see why Buffalo Bill had closed his show, turned his back on crowded houses and box receipts, and had hastened to bear his part in the deadly and dramatic work on the frontier.

*****

ON July 1st Merritt reached the Fifth cavalry away out on the dry fork of the South Cheyenne. On the 2nd, with Buffalo Bill leading, they had their first lively chase after a war party of Sioux, and followed it with five long days of scouting under hot suns, and short nights of sleeping under the stars. Then — just as they were saddling on the morning of the 7th of July, came dread and direful news: Custer — "The Long Haired" — the daring and dashing leader, with five of his favorite companies, had been swept from the face of the earth in fierce battle with the Sioux.

Perhaps no man felt it more than Cody, who had ridden with Custer on many a run for buffalo. Perhaps no man more eagerly welcomed the news that now the regiment would be recalled to Fort Laramie to fit out with supplies, and then march to strengthen Crook's command, now in its entrenched camp at the base of the Big Horn. Perhaps no man more delightedly heard Merritt's sudden order — a few days later — to face again northward, ride like the wind and be ready to fight like the devil. Eight hundred Southern Cheyennes, old antagonists of the Fifth, had had a grand pow-wow at the Red Cloud agency, and openly declared their intention of starting to join forces with their victorious brethren under Sitting Bull.

Merritt's generalship always was fine; this day it was great. With just seven companies he was in bivouac at the moment close to Rawhide Ford of the Red Cloud Laramie road, sixty-five miles southeast of the reservation. It was just noon, Saturday, the 13th. He had promptly reasoned that the Indians would take the broad trail across the valley of the South Cheyenne, where the Fifth had been scouting and chasing until Sheridan's order of recall reached them on the 12th. The route was now open. There was nothing to hinder the Indian move. If, as announced, they started on Sunday, they should be crossing by Monday morning. Merritt's resolve was taken instantly. He would make a wide circuit back by Rawhide Butte and Cardinal's Chair, march eighty-five miles night and day, and get there first. Then — with only 400 men all told, throw himself across the Indian path, and though they might be two to his one — drive them back to the reservation.

That was a memorable march. It was fourteen miles west to Rawhide Peak, and there at 4 o'clock they halted, watered, re-mounted, rode on again — northward now to the valley of the Niobrara, where at 10 p. m. they unsaddled, bivouacked to three in the morning, by which time the wagons with rations and forage had caught up. Men and horses were roused, given a substantial breakfast, then away they went again — east — northeast now, and heading for the Cheyenne crossing.

The Indians to reach it had only an easy Sunday ride of twenty-eight miles northwestward from their abandoned camps. The Fifth cavalry, after a thirty-five-mile jog all Saturday afternoon and evening, had still a fifty-mile stage to cover, and had to make it unsuspected and unseen. With only an hour's rest at the old stockade on Sage creek, where every belt and pocket was crammed with ball cartridges, Merritt marched his hardy column, Cody and his scouts well in the lead and far out on the eastward flank, and just at 8 p. m. on Sunday, silently under the stars, halted below the bluffs of a tributary to the South Cheyenne, long known to the Indians as War Bonnet creek. Here close at hand was the grand crossing, and the Fifth had won the race. Half an hour's scout enabled Cody to assure Merritt that the hostiles were still to the southeast, between them and the reservation — that it was a safe bet they would be along early Monday morning, and probably not before.

That night, in spite of yelping coyotes on every side, every horse and man, save only the watchful guard, had at least a few hours of sleep. Then came the dawn of a most eventful day — Monday, July 17th.

*****

AS the stars began to pale in the eastern sky and a faint gray light to steal over the landscape, the outlying sentries began peering over the banks and ridges behind which they were crouching. The southeast — the direction from which the hostiles should come — was the important front, and the officer of the guard, Lieutenant King, taking with him Sergeant Schreiber and Corporal Wilkinson, crept further out to a little knoll from which they found unobstructed view. East — southeast — south and southwest — the rolling prairie lay spread before them. Directly in their front was a broad open "swale," rising gradually to a long ridge stretching from east to west. Winding away to the southwest and a little distance to their right, lay the road by which they had come the previous evening. Directly southward, with its branches cutting into the ridge, a dry water course in a shallow ravine, extended well across the swale and passing to the right of the knoll, wound its way through the bluffs to the bed of the War Bonnet. The road crossed it but a stone's throw to the right of the knoll. The ground rose in a V-shaped tongue between the ravine and the road, hiding one from the other. Even as the officer, kneeling near the crest, was studying with his binocular the distant winding of the road, he was suddenly accosted by Corporal Wilkinson:

"Look, lieutenant, there are Indians!"

Levelling his glass in the direction pointed, Lieutenant King quickly sighted not one, but two or three groups of mounted warriors scurrying about along that southward ridge, evidently in great excitement. In a moment a messenger was hurried back to notify   General Merritt and almost instantly the order was sent noiselessly from troop to troop:

"Saddle up and mount."

In five minutes, riding up from the hidden bivouac, came the general, with three of his staff and Buffalo Bill. Dismounting behind the knoll, they crawled up to where King kept watch. Following in a moment more came two of Cody's scout, Tait and "Chips" — and perhaps half a dozen of the guard, all concealed behind the knoll.

Briefly Lieutenant King pointed out the lay of the land. "What puzzles me," said he, "is the action of the Indians. There are hundreds of them along that ridge, all darting about as though watching something out on the Sage creek road, keeping hid from the west, but evidently seeing and suspecting nothing in this direction."

By this time, though the sun was not yet peeping above the horizon, every moving object along the southward ridge was distinctly visible, and the long stretch of winding road could be seen full four miles away. By this time, too, the ridge and every slope screened from the west were fairly alive with Indians, and even Cody was mystified.

"What in thunder are those fellows fooling about!" said he.

*****

THEN all of a sudden came the explanation. Afar out over the westward slopes, where the land was higher — first one, then another white dot came slowly into view until presently a little string was crawling towards them.

"The wagon train, by all that's wonderful!" cried Bill, "and we never thought they could make it!"

Make it — they had. Though expected to halt at the Sage creek stockade, Lieutenant Hall, the quartermaster in charge, had baited his mules, piled a lot of infantrymen with their long rifles on top of his rations but under the wagon covers, and shoved ahead on an all-night march. This then, was the cause of the tremendous excitement among the Cheyennes — a rich train bound for the Black Hills! What better prize could they hope for? Already they were signalling belated brethren up from the rear, little dreaming how very much more those wagons might hold! And then suddenly, just as the sun came peering over the eastward hills, a new excitement arose. To the amaze of Merritt's party on the knoll, a brilliant little band of warriors, detaching from the main body on the ridge, came lashing full speed down the slope directly toward them, war bonnets streaming in the wind, their ponies bounding over the turf, and then, almost as suddenly came the explanation. Only a mile away to the southwest, popping suddenly over a wave of prairie, two couriers rode suddenly into view. Bearing dispatches to Merritt, believing him now so near and the coast entirely clear, they had ventures forward from the train and all unconscious of danger, were speeding straight to their death.

Like a whirlwind came the Indians — by this time speeding down the tortuous ravine, and Cody saw the scheme at a glance — to dash six to one upon the unwary riders, at the point where the road in the ravine met — and the rest — could better be imagined than described.

"By Jove, general," he cried, "now's our chance! Let us mount and cut those fellows off!"

Instantly came Merritt's answer. "Up to you, Cody! Stay there, King! Watch till they're close under you, then give the word!"

It was a thrilling moment. Already six companies had saddled and ridden into line close under the screening bluffs, 200 yards to the rear — a sweet surprise would that be for the Cheyennes! Already the ridge to the south was fairly bristling with feathered crests, lances and shields, as scores of Indians watched with eager envy the dash of their fellows on the helpless prey. Already Cody, "Chips," Tait and half a dozen troopers had sprung to saddle behind the knoll. Merritt and his aids crouched half way down the slope. Only Lieutenant King remained at the crest, stretched at full length, the top of his hatless head alone visible from the Indian side. Already above the swift beating of their hearts the little party could hear the swifter tattoo of nimble hoofs upon the resounding turf. All eyes were fixed on King, awaiting his signal. Ten seconds too soon and the dashing foemen could easily veer and escape. Two seconds too late and the couriers were dead men. Presently the watchers saw the gauntleted hand cautiously lifting, higher and higher. Ten — five seconds more — and then came the ringing order:

"Now lads — in with you!"

And with an instant rush and cheer the little party of scouts and troopers burst from their concealment, tore headlong around the shoulder of bluff and straight at the face of the astonished foe — Buffalo Bill ten lengths in the lead.

*****

IN the moment that followed, Merritt and his officers sprang again to the crest. The officers had only their revolvers, but Corporal Wilkinson's carbine let drive the first shot. Cool and daring,   the Indian leader bent low over his pony's neck and sent his answering shot close to the general's cheek, and then as he straightened in saddle, he was suddenly aware of a foeman equally daring, dashing straight upon him, half a dozen cheering troopers at his heels. One glance was more than enough. Even Indians who never before had seen him — well knew Buffalo Bill, and the lean brown arm with its glistening bracelets and brandishing lance was thrown on high in warning to his fellows. The lance was flung aside even as, veering to the right to avoid the shock of the charge and bring his rifle into action, the superb young chief flung himself along his pony's outstretched neck to aim beneath it, just as Cody's first bullet tore through his left leg and into the gallant pony's heart, tumbling steed and rider headlong in confused and kicking heap. Frantic with excitement, his amazed followers circled to right and left, and the young brave struggling to his feet — his rifle hurled from his grasp — his tomahawk brandished for close combat, was flung again to earth as Cody's charger stumbled over the dying pony. The next instant white chief and red — Buffalo Bill for the scouts and the cavalry — Yellow Hand for the Southern Cheyennes, once more faced each other in deadly grapple, and in another the pride of the warrior tribe lay gasping on the sod.

*****

EVEN then in the moment of his breathless victory, there was peril for Buffalo Bill. Astonished though they were at the sight of this onslaught of a handful of foes, the Cheyennes along the mile-away ridge were quick to realize what had happened, and in one magnificent dash they came charging down to the rescue. One minute the broad, sun-lit slope was fairly alive with mounted warriors, full twenty score, all full panoplied in Indian fashion, lurid with paint, brilliant with flashing ornaments, their wild war bonnets streaming behind them. On they came, yelling hate, vengeance, death and defiance, and for the moment it looked as though Cody and his little band would be swallowed up in the rush. Only for a moment though, for before half the distance from ridge to knoll had been covered, up from the screen of bluffs to the north came line after line, troop after troop of blue-shirted riders, their guidons flashing, their carbines unslung and advanced, and in a burst of cheers and a thunder of hoofs, the Fifth cavalry swooped down at the gallop. The sight was too much even for Cheyenne nerves, and, leaving their dead on the field, the bewildered, out-generaled warriors reined in, whirled about, turned and fled — never stopping until safe within the limits of the reservation, where — no matter what their sins, they were safe from soldier hands. Thither followed the Fifth — and there that night, awe-stricken Indians crept about their bivouac fires, intent on seeing the chief who had beaten them at their own game, and with fear, hatred and baffled vengeance in their eyes, following and studying the famous scout who that day had stripped them of their daring leader — Yellow Hand. In all Merritt's hard-riding column, there was no man who did not accord the honors of the day to Buffalo Bill.

 

"BUFFALO BILL'S" PICTURES.

The Indian war pictures that are running this week in Omaha are something unique. They are much more nearly true to actual occurrences than the public had been led to believe from the newspaper accounts printed during their preparation. There are persons in Omaha who were present at the battle of Wounded Knee and they express the opinion that the occurrences are presented as faithfully as it is possible by moving pictures. The Indians who took part in that fight were poor, half-starved creatures, but they appear in the pictures as dressed in the costly and full regalia of Indian chiefs. Those who took the pictures say that they did their utmost to prevent that, but the Indians who took part, now all prosperous, insisted on "dressing up" for the occasion to the limit of their means. Aside from that defect, the pictures are so realistic that the scenes were quickly recognized by those who saw the actual fight. There was not one moving picture actor employed in creating the scenes, and for that reason they are far more valuable than the western scenes that have been put out by any of the film companies.

It was a happy inspiration to close the show with pictures of Indian schools and industries and Indian life of the present day. There is nothing to be learned from the pictures as to the causes of these Indian wars, but they will likely lead many to search the historical records to find out the causes. There they will learn that about 25,000 Indians, who had no knowledge of agriculture, were herded on reservations, mostly in the semi-arid regions, and told they must make a living farming, when not one in a hundred had ever seen a plow. They were given scant rations for a while and then there suddenly came from Washington an order to cut down the rations one-half. If 25,000 white men, having no knowledge of farming, had been placed in the same condition, they too would have been reduced to starvation, and they, too, might have gone to war, however desperate the chances.

  [photo] [photo] [photo]   [photo] [photo] CHEYENNE
E — E — OUW — E — E
WYOMING

Famous Old Scout Suddenly Appears as Though He Sprang From the Pictures of Great Indian Battles Flashed on Screen.

It is proverbial that the surprise of something happening that is "not on the bill" is of an unpleasant nature, but when it electrifies, bewilders with hair-standing effect, startling one by its suddenness, and as quickly becomes a pleasure-giving incident, it is doubly enjoyed on account of its unexpectedness.

Last night such a sensation was created at the Tabor when the audience, wrapped in close attention to the scenes of the Battle of Summit Springs, 1869, and War Bonnet Creek, 1876, enthralled by the life-size and lifelike figures of the participants, with Buffalo Bill prominently leading — saw the camera switched off at the finish of the thrilling combat. Then what seemed an apparition of a prairie centaur suddenly appeared, but it was the living, breathing Old Scout on his famed white horse Isham. Unannounced he galloped on the stage, as with a flash up went the lights in the darkened auditorium. It startled the mental poise of the auditors for an instant, as in olden days of superstitious belief would the uncanny story of the phantom horseman.

The effect was if they had just returned from the charge, recrossed the battlefield and ridden right out of the picture — real life an dblood [sic] duplicates in the last scenes.

AUDIENCE THRILLED BY CODY'S MAGNETISM.

It was received with spontaneous plaudits such as only a magnetic personality in thrilling action could achieve — something new in the history of the "movie" art, it being as if Hamlet in person answered the curtain call at the end of Shakespeare's immortal drama.

In the calm after the storm of enthusiasm had subsided the old plainsman doffed his sombrero, patted his milk-white steed, and said: "Gee, old pard, that was a hot one; we are going swift; two victories of forty-five and thirty-eight years ago in forty minutes, and another campaign to move on for."

And as quickly as they came they vanished past the footlights.

Interest in present Indian conditions was increased last night by the addition of a reel showing the contrast at Pine Ridge agency in twenty-three years, since the Ghost Dance war and now; a market day at the ridge with a lively country fair style assemblage of red skinned ranchers with farm wagons, hay trucks, surreys, buckboards, carriages and automobiles succeeding the old style pack horses and saddlers. It shows the modern buildings, churches and schools that have supplanted the tepees, tents and wigwams, with uniformed scholars vieing with our Vassar girls; husky lads with brass bands; the change producing famed as well as learned graduates — champion athletes like Jim Thorpe and others in the fields of football and baseball, as a substitute for the Remington and minnie balls of their grandfathers; future patriots who will rush to their country's call and follow Old Glory to victory.

GRAYBEARDS GATHER NIGHTLY AT THE TABOR.

Daily and nightly the gray beards and Martha Washingtons, the early birds of the old West, and the military veterans attend devoutly. They often bring old tintypes, daguerreotypes and photos of persons and scenes when the sanguinary "Old Overland Trail" was the "road to Denver." Many have a wealth of reminiscent memories attached. Among them was a family souvenir which a young woman brought, and which especially moved Colonel Cody. It was a five group photograph of old-timers — all dead but himself — three of the most famed hunters and scouts and two of the most genial New York sports that ever trailed the West, away back in '73. It was taken after a big hunt that General Sheridan had arranged for Lish Green, a rich friend, and a once famous Broadwayite; Eugene Overton, following the great hunt of the Russian Grand Duke Alexis, under United States government auspices, with Generals Sheridan, Custer, in fact the flower of the United States army, under the guidance of Buffalo Bill in 1872.

HELPED PLACE DENVER UPON THE SOCIAL MAP.

This party, by the way, helped to put Denver on the social map, by their visit and the hospitalities extended to this first of royal visitors — Bill Cody being the chaperon, comrade in the parlor and ballroom, as he had been leader in the camp and on the hunt.

"Texas Jack" (J. B. Omohundro), after the Civil war, during which they were opponents, was Cody's 'pard' as hunter and guide, and is made famous by the writings of such sportsmen as the Earl of Dunraven in his book, "The Great Divide," whom he and Cody guided to Estes park, where the earl for years was a large landholder, and probably would have remained here had it not been for an immense "estate succession" demanding his return.

WILD BILL KICOCK'S NAME CARVED HIGH.

Wild Bill Hicock's name is carved in scouting and martial honors on the scroll of Western history, that makes it — like his comrade's, Buffalo Bill's — imperishable. One little episode, graphically told in Harper's Monthly of February, 1867, where he killed ten "bad men" unaided in a hand-to-hand fight, is but one of the many thrilling events that illumined his career. He was killed by an assassin at Deadwood, where his tomb is a shrine to the lovers of the brave on the apex of the Black Hills, while "Texas Jack" reposes in the mountain cemetery of Leadville, both overlooking the great plains that resounded with their fame from the foothills of the Rockies to the valley of the Missouri.

Their old comrade, pal and leader, Colonel Cody, "Buffalo Bill," still is preserving, by his presence and work, the history they revelled in — those pages of stirring Western story that even the yet middle-aged voters know of — by making a new era in the popular "moving picture" history, by initiating another grade of permanent value in pioneer pictures that move the patriotic emotions. The old scout and his Indian war pictures will continue the rest of the week in the pioneer play palace of Denver — the Tabor.

 

Buffalo Bill (Himself) Has Another Fortune Grabbed in the Movies

HISTORIC MOVING PICTURES AN ENORMOUS SUCCESS

Great Showman Coming to Albuquerque Next Week with Sells-Floto Shows for Four Days' Visit.

MAJOR BURKE HAPPY OVER CHIEF'S WINNING

All the hero-worshipping small boys and their fathers — the small boys of other days — who were grieved to hear of the financial straits into which Buffalo Bill fell last fall, will rejoice to hear of the good news that Major John M. Burke, Colonel Cody's old plains "pardner," has brought to town with him. Colonel Cody's fortunes have tagen [sic] a decided change. The famous old scout's scheme for a moving picture history of the stirring campaigns attendant on the opening of the great western empire in which he took part has been launched with such tremendous success that Buffalo Bill has another fortune in sight.

"Yes, sir," chuckled Major Burke, yesterday, with the delight of an "old pard" in the good fortune of his friend, "the old man has the world by the ears."

Colonel Cody's pictorial history of the old west was made with the approval of the United States government. At the scenes of such stirring happenings as the battle at War Bonnet creek in 1876 Buffalo Bill re-enacted the part he took in the campaigns. In all the pictures the action represents with historical accuracy the surroundings and scenes of the thrilling happenings of the days when the palefaces were battling with the Indians.

And here is another bit of good news for the small boys and those other small boys who have grown up. Buffalo Bill is to spend a whole week in Albuquerque. He is to appear in character as the fearless scout of the old days with the Sells-Floto shows, but that will be on one day only. The rest of the week he will be just visiting, resting before the beginning of the strenuous circus season, ready to meet old friends and new ones.

The colonel will come here next Tuesday, when the Sells-Floto and Buffalo Bill (Himself) shows come to town to prepare for the opening of the season. He will have plenty of visitors, because he is a member of the G. A. H. Shriners, Elks and Eagles, and is always delighted to meet his fraternal brethren.

The shows will come here from Denver, leaving the Colorado metropolis [photo] Major John W. Burke Sunday. The setting up of the show camp here will be an event worth traveling miles to see. One of its features will be the erection of the largest canvas ever built, by motive power. One man does the work of 100 almost in a jiffy. Show people to the number of fifty or more are coming here from New York, Bridgeport, Conn., San Francisco and Baraboro to see it done. It is regarded as a big event in the circus world.

The circus, with Buffalo Bill, will show here Saturday, March 28, giving two performances. In addition to the enlarged Sells-Floto circus, greatest of all the circi [sic] (get that?) Buffalo Bill will appear in scenes of western life with Sioux Indians, cowboys, ranch girls and military. It is the greatest circus bill ever offered the American public.

"The Sells-Floto show was the best circus before the amalgamation," said Major Burke yesterday, "and now, with Colonel Cody, it is the absolute last gasp in arenic marvels."

Major Burke is as enthusiastic over the admission price of the show as he is over the show itself. He says the twenty-five-cent admission represents a noteworthy crack at the high-end devil.

"The circus is a necessity of life," says the major, "Americans can't grow up without going to the circus. And the Sells-Floto management, realizing that they were dealing with a necessity of life, set out to put it within reach of all the people. The ideal that they aim at is "All-the-Family-Go-to-the-Circus. And they have made it possible for all the family to go, by putting the price down to twenty-five cents. There are to be no Cinderellas weeping at home when the Sells-Floto shows and Buffalo Bill appear in town."

Banner image: Buffalo Bill Center of the West, Cody, Wyoming, U.S.A.; Original Buffalo Bill Museum Collection, P.69.118