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

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