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

 

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.

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