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

BUFFALO BILL'S SHOW.

10,000 Persons See the Opening Performance at Ambrose Park, South Brooklyn.

More than 10,000 persons went to the opening performance of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show at Ambrose Park, South Brooklyn, yesterday afternoon. They began to arrive at the grounds soon after 1 o'clock, although the performance was not scheduled to begin until 3. They wandered around the encampment, which is systematically laid out in streets, and gazed into the tents, where the Indians were putting on a few last daubs of paint, with perhaps pardonable curiosity.

The show itself was a great success. The vast amphitheatre, surrounded on three sides by the grand stand, was a panorama of constantly changing scenes. There were but a few minutes during the two hours and a half entertainment when the arena was not filled with a band of yelling horsemen riding at full speed and shouting at imaginary foes. The exciting scenes from prairie life were especially popular with the young people in the audience. The certainty, however, that the wandering settler and his family were to be attacked by the relentless savages whenever they laid their heads down for a good night's rest, and that the savages in turn were to be attacked and decimated by Buffalo Bill and his cowboys, who always happened to be in the neighborhood with apparently nothing to do but rescue settlers, detracted somewhat from the interest of those scenes.

The feats of horsemanship by the Cossacks and the shooting by Annie Oakley, Johnnie Baker, and Col. Cody were interesting features of the show. The military musical drill was also well received. The Gauchos, from Argentina, arrived on the Paris yesterday. They were not in time to take part in the afternoon performance, but they appeared in the evening.

The initial performance of the Wild West Show was marked by the death of one of the participants. Bryant Lynn, aged 43 years, a member of the company of Royal Irish Lancers. While sweeping around the amphitheatre with his squad, he dropped his lance just as he came near the front of the grand stand, and an instant later dropped off his horse.

One of his fellow lancers dismounted and picked him up, and with the assistance of some of the attendants he was carried to a tent in the rear of the grand stand. A half-drunken spectator climbed over the enclosure, and, picking up the lance of the dismounted man, started to carry it off. Three policemen, after a lively tussle, disarmed him and hustled him off the grounds.

Lynn was unconscious when he reached the tent, and died before the arrival of Dr. Hart of Third avenue, who had been hastily summoned. He had not been injured in any way by the fall, and Dr. Hart said that his death was clearly due to heart disease, from which he had been suffering for some time. He is said to have been connected with the British army for ten years, and had been only six weeks in the country. Coroner Kane will hold an inquest to-morrow. There were not half a dozen persons among the spectators who had any knowledge of the man's death.